


Breaking a Song

by Toshi_Nama



Series: Song and Taint [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Grey Wardens, Post-Canon, this gets weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 16:13:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19023418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toshi_Nama/pseuds/Toshi_Nama
Summary: The Warden-Mother was knowing of the Songs and the Singers.  She Sang, but there was a need.  She was finding her freedom with or without a cure.  The Old Son - the Song's Mother knew more.What Songs do the Wardens hear?  What Connectings do they take?  Here, and decide.





	1. Chapter 1

Sudden staccato sounds shattered her concentration.  A lurch of her stomach and the shivering fatigue along her bones told Alissa that attempting to regain it would be futile or deadly, and so she sighed.  Black shadows unreeled themselves, lining the veins pulsing underneath skin turned porcelain-pale once more.  A final blink, and her eyes returned to hazel, the film vanishing like a second, unneeded lid.  “Yes?”

“My…” The door didn’t open.  “Land has been sighted.”

Unfolding her legs, Alissa sighed and used her staff to lever herself upright, bracing against the now-familiar sway beneath her feet.  By the time she forced the door – cockeyed since the storm – open, there was no one in front of her tiny cabin.  The breathing creature a ship at sea became moved on, ignoring the red-haired irritant in its midst.  She had no place here and was not wanted, no matter that her gold was.

Three weeks ago, she’d lost the ability to feel the web of corruption that had been a steady heartbeat against her own almost since she left the Circle.  One week later, her dreams no longer whispered.  Two days ago, even diving deep into the Taint in her own blood gave her only the echo of melody, a whisper of a memory.  Only the tugging of a thread tied to her very bones and the simmering cool of her own blood remained of the reason that drove her from Thedas’ shores.

The butterfly-bright silks and satins she’d worn for years were set aside, comfort and beauty abandoned for the dull, nondescript practicality of worn leather and simple linen.  Nothing remained of the Arlessa.  Of the Warden-Commander, only a worn silverite chain, dark from years of wear, dipped below her shirt.  Of the woman, bright red-gold hair and a ring.  Of the mage, a staff towering over her head, its sinuous curves shaped by no Tranquil Formari, the rough amber placed to no human logic.

Alone, Alissa stood and watched as cloud resolved into shore, familiar and so different.  Her face, as it had been since the day she walked into the darkness under Vigil’s Keep, was dry.  Sentiment was a luxury.  Wonder murmured and whispered against her, its presence also faded – or her own perceptions, perhaps.  She ran reassuring fingers through its unseen substance, ignoring the gestures of the sailors behind her.  The ship wanted nothing to do with her and had made its rejection obvious.  Therefore its customs were of no concern to her, especially compared to the subtle flare of the spirit who companioned her, as bereft of companionship as she.

How long she stood waiting, she had no idea.  Time meant nothing trapped between wind and wave, until a droplet of blood thrummed against her heart.  Her eyes lifted to see wings stretched proud, flirting with reflected sun and darting in and out of the clouds.

_ Morrigan, you might be right.  Stone, please let your information pan out.  _

**

The song was growing worse.  It was always there, unless he thought about something else.  The others felt the same, those still here.  They wouldn’t be much longer.  “Sigrun.  Take this to Orzammar, please.  And stay there, with Bhelen or the Legion, until we tell you to come back. Whoever you’re least likely to kill or die around.  If you can still hear the Calling, go...I don’t know.  Take your group to the Marches and go nest hunting.  Markus and Liana are going with you, as well as three of the Awakened.  Um - don’t let them go into Orzammar.”

Sigrun rolled her eyes, but everyone’s tempers had been growing short.

“Nathaniel.  Go back to Kirkwall with...Hans.  Check out the Thaig and see how the city’s been coming along.  Take a note to the Champion, and you’ll need a full half-dozen Awakened.  Oh, tell Cuddles and Caller to follow the Warden-mother spark as far as they can under the Surface.  Avoid people, don’t go into the ocean.  Wait for her, warn her.  I’ll leave them a note and will send more as I can.  Slash will stay with me.”  They hadn’t come back, but that was fine.  Nathaniel could reach them, maybe.

A handful of others got orders out of Ferelden to a variety of places.  Antiva, to build trade connections.  Starkhaven and Ostwick, to buy building materials and weapons for the new trainees or books for the library he’d sponsored in the Chantry.

“Everyone.  Go far away.  This isn’t a real Calling.  This is...something else.  I don’t know what.  We need Wardens to stay safe, to be ready afterward.  We know there are intelligent Darkspawn.  We don’t know how many other kinds there are, though.  If it’s like the Champion warned, once you get far enough, you shouldn’t hear it any more.  Send me a note so I know where you are and what support you need.  Then stay out of range.”

They left, and Alistair tipped his head back with a sigh, balancing his chair on two legs.

“Where are you going?”  Nathaniel’s voice broke through the song, and Alistair fell with a clatter.

“Maker!  Warn a man before you startle him.”  Alistair looked away, then back up at the dark Warden.  “She swore she’d come back to me, Nathaniel.”  The other Warden had to have heard the wistfulness, the hope, from where he still lay on the floor.  “I’ll go to Orlais to report since Warden-Commander Clarel is technically senior to us with Alissa gone.  If I’d been the partner she needed, maybe she wouldn’t have left me behind.  But by the Maker, I’ll be here as long as I can.  Keeping everyone safe.”  The iron left his voice.  “It’s what we do, right?”

**

The dreams returned first.

So long since they’d murmured to silence, Alissa almost didn’t recognize what happened, recoiled from the desire she felt yearning from her body.  She woke with a start and shimmering clear-black tears fell on the thin pad that masqueraded as a pillow, the shifting world around her, creaks and sloshes beating the pulse of the ship.  As she sat up, she saw the damp, dark residue.  Newly-ingrained habit had her touch a finger to the pillow.  The ash seethed against her barrier, and some sifted out.  The Tainted remainder were held as her barrier compressed, then she tucked the shimmering flake of remainder into a bulging pouch.

“Wonder?”

It wrapped itself around her feet, then coiled p against her ribs, her lungs…they’d both learned…learned…what?

She remembered the shore.  She remembered the strangeness, the  _ life,  _ springing up around them, sprightly in a way she’d never felt.  Remembered learning, remembered wings rustling, proud…remembered an eye larger than she was, brimming with keen intelligence, wariness, and curiosity.  Days passed, one after the other….but she couldn’t remember the steady beat of seasons.

She couldn’t remember…it faded, the time mere sand through her grasping fingers.  Scrabbling fingers found her pack filled with journals which were themselves packed with words, diagrams, notes…she remembered  _ none  _ of it, but it was all in her hand.

“What happened to me?”

The ache, remembering what was missing in her heart and mind, overcame uneasiness.  Hazel eyes closed as she dove into her blood and black corruption surged from her veins, running beneath skin and coating her in shadows as she sought out the single, twining thread that pulled her back.

A wondrous land behind her…she remembered wonder and awe, but it had merely tolerated her malign presence long enough for what she had sought, then expelled her, turning away.  So be it – she had no place there.  Her place…a vibration through her blood, not  _ quite  _ the memory of a Song…her Song.   _ She  _ was the Singer.  Rather than listening, Alissa delved deeper, twining her melody around the spidersilk.

She hadn’t come to the distant land long-faded behind her seeking welcome or belonging, so its rejection was less than nothing.  She’d come seeking knowledge, to build an answer…one that filled her books and her mind, even if the learning of it had abandoned her when she left those stranger shores.

_ I’m coming home. _

**

A week she slept cradled in a barrier, holding the Taint of her corrupted body closer than a child, before the first reflections of her melody came back through the thread connecting her to the others.  Now it was tears of joy that seeped charcoal trails along her skin.

The sailors still avoided her, the ship’s rejection no less certain than the land behind her, as she sat on the dock and brushed out her hair, inch by tangled inch.  For a time, she sat in salt-spray and the gently caressing warmth of the sun, loose hair bathing her in bright blood, then another dark look from the Captain shattered the moment.  Braiding was never quick, but practiced fingers flew through the motions until her one glory was again bound.

_ Home  _ beat black in her blood, in the faint echoes of those yearning out for her, the Singer at the center of the Song they’d kept alive for the untold, unremembered spool of days.  Caution rose, and she closed the cabin door on sunlight and wary eyes to let her skin shadow to reach out again.   _ Soon.  _

**

Welcome spiraled from the depths to curl around her ankles.  A smile rose even as Alissa knelt, touching the barrier of earth between her and the glorious cacophony.  “I’ll come to you,” her sharp voice murmured,  _ knowing  _ they would hear without it but wanting to say the words aloud.

The presence of so many Wardens pressed against her mind differently than the Darkspawn ever below the Anderfels…but  _ those,  _ she could handle, if she wasn’t mistaken.  Better to try, she decided as she absently returned the nods of the Wardens watching the docks, hardly noting the respectful way the other passersby shifted to let her through simply because of the griffon on her shoulder and that  _ something _ even ordinary people could sense about those who survived the Joining.  Her few remaining silvers were enough to buy food and waterskins. 

“A blanket?  This winter’s been cold, Warden.”

_ The Deep Roads were comfortingly constant.   _ “I have what I need, mother.”

The woman blushed, appreciating the gentle courtesy and able like so many to ignore the unusual tones a Warden sometimes used.  “If you are sure….”

She was sure.  “I just landed.  Where have they been lately?”

In the Anderfels, there was only one  _ they.   _ “East, Warden.  The incursions south were cleared out before the leaves started to turn.”  She shook her head.  “It’s been hard.  Like they  _ know  _ the Chantry’s focused on other things.  Thank Andraste her Herald sealed the Breach and ended that.  Demons  _ and  _ them, it was hard.  Now the Divine’s trying to rebuild, and still doesn’t have the time or people to lend aid.”

War?  Breach?  Alissa didn’t ask, merely nodded.  Asking would make her recognizable.  For the moment, she was just a fellow Warden…though there  _ were  _ fewer than she’d expected.  She could feel each of them now, beads of dew along the web of their Song.

Before she left Laysh, she bought one of the rags.  Almost worthless for news, but…

It fell from suddenly-nerveless fingers. 

_ The Twelfth of Harvestmere, 9:44 Dragon _

**She’d lost four _years._ **


	2. Claiming her Warden

Damp, hard darkness was lit by the faint green wisp circling her staff, but it was enough.  A half-day’s walk from the port city had led her to an entrance, old fragments of the Blight still scenting it to her awareness.  Now she picked her way through, knowing this would lead deeper…darker, until it opened into…

Alissa had to rest once before the familiar lava glow half-lit the Taint-coated carvings around her.  The Deep Roads.   _ ‘They go everywhere under the Surface, but have been lost to the Darkspawn.’   _ Darkspawn…she could sense  _ them  _ easily enough.

Those who were close enough, she reached through the Taint and set it afire within them.  Rasping screams ran through her mind, but in so many ways it was nothing but an end to the hunger, no more than smoking out a wasp nest.  The larger concentrations she avoided with a mental note, cloaking herself in a reflection of their Song.

Deepstalkers and spiders were larger problems, but even then, she and Wonder were able to overcome.  Time was  _ properly  _ meaningless as she moved ever-closer to the faint, shifting sensations of her Awakened, their voices joining to the web of Song and connection, their faith making up for the distance and their few numbers.

Their melody fizzed against her soul, and she started running before eyes could distinguish fallen stones from Grumpy’s thigh, before she pieced out the stronger rot-scent of the Awakened against the dull acrid sweetness of the lichen that dripped from Ages-old statues.  They fit back into her mind, harmonies weaving through the larger Song. 

“Warden-Mother.  You are back.”

“We hunted,” said Waiting, the name blazed into his harsh fluting tone heard through her blood. 

They had no real sense of time, especially since they’d stayed here unless they were hunting…and their hunts took them further below the mountains and Orlais, rather than toward the sun.  Her journey had been ‘too long.’  What were seasons in the cool darkness?

A talon drew a line on her cheek and caught a darkly shimmering tear.  Reassurance stopped the sudden violence building around her.  “It’s time.”

_ Understanding.   _ Flick and Waiting stumbled ahead, listening, while Grumpy sheltered her, no higher than his knee.  Alissa didn’t need to ask about Painter – she felt his temporary absence.

Vigil’s Keep was weeks away even without dealing with the vagaries of travel across the Surface.  They walked, Grumpy carrying the tiny mage, red braid trailing in the dust and webs, when she needed rest.   _ They  _ didn’t.

The Deep Roads were never truly dark – but they were never truly light.  Painter had found water ahead.  She remembered the taste of deepstalker; a ripple of amusement went through the Song thinking of Alistair’s affront when Caller had brought them to stop his complaining, thatHunt with her Awakened.

Was it a good thing, that the Magister never returned to her dreams?  Corypheus.  She tasted the name, remembered the  _ feel  _ of him within the corruption bursting out and around him, the way he warped the Songs around him.

_ ‘I will not submit.’ _

His sorrow and warning.  _ ‘I know.’ _

_ Irritation. _

Alissa cocked her head, listening closer to the Ogre.

“He came.  He left.  Wardens listened.  We did not hear the Song.  Holding yours.”

_ He came.   _ The chill was nothing to the rest.   _ Wardens listened.   _ Flick growled, the sound snarling against the melody, but now she was starting to taste the others at the edge of perception.  Her own Awakened almost drowned the Warden-Song.  So  _ faint!  _

“Home.”  The word rumbled through passages whose sameness disguised their familiarity.

_ Home. _

For all the tones, she couldn’t hear  _ his,  _ the lightness at odds with its complexity.   _ Alistair.   _ No.  She’d know if he was...he must be too far away, travelling again. _  Must be. _

**

She was wrong.

**

Weisshaupt.  Somewhere she’d avoided – and the center of the Order she was still bound to by vows and the corruption in her blood, at least for the moment.

“We shouldn’t be here, Alissa.”      

Nathaniel was right – but she had no choice.  She’d never had many choices: not within the constraints of the Templars at the Circle, not once Duncan conscripted her to save her from the Knight-Commander angry she’d shown non-mages could corrupt…as her mentor had asked, knowing she would pay any price, damn him.  And ever since, the creeping corruption in her blood, the whispers, the nightmares that had at least gotten fewer since she and Alistair had defied all odds and ended the Fifth Blight. Even since then she was Warden-Commander with those obligations…and bound by Queen Anora’s paranoia and hatred for the Wardens who’d showed her father’s true colors at the Landsmeet, who’d executed him…and who she owed the throne, for one of them had the better claim.  The one who’d gone to Weisshaupt to try warn them about a risen Magister, one of the Seven who brought the Taint to the world. The one who in two and a half years, hadn’t returned.

She sighed.  “I had to leave to the West, following Morrigan’s lead.  I abandoned him.” In a lower voice, “I knew what Weisshaupt wanted and tried to protect him from that.  And this is what that led to – he had no idea how desperately they wanted knowledge.  Knowledge he doesn’t have.”  Knowledge she’d foolishly tried to protect him from. No more, not after this. He’d done it for the Inquisitor…but mostly had done it for her.  Nathaniel told her what he’d done: when Vigil’s Keep started feeling the Calling, he’d sent almost all the senior Wardens out into the Free Marches, hoping it was far enough away, before admitting her absence to Warden-Commander Clarel of Orlais and submitting to her authority.  Sigrun, Nathaniel, Hans, Maxine, a dozen more. Whoever he knew she’d valued, as many as he could justify to the Queen and the Order. Recruiting, exploring near that old Thaig in the Deep Roads with the Architect’s assistance (though that was never admitted), negotiating for supplies to finish the new library at the Keep, the training academy she’d had the Wardens sponsor in Amaranthine.

“Alissa.”

“Nathaniel, you can’t talk me out of this.  You should know that by now.” He smiled slightly at that one, a smile that vanished as she continued.  “You know almost everything I do, but I need to tell you the rest. I left the notes in Val Royeaux in a pile with my kinswoman’s things.  No one will go through it for some time.” Her mouth tightened. “Even the Order would hesitate to go after the Inquisitor if it occurred to them to look.  My usual cipher.”

“What are you doing?”

“I can’t take you with me.  We three are the only ones outside Morrigan who could put together the pieces, and I haven’t heard from her since I’ve been back.  You have to stay free, have to be ready to command Vigil’s Keep.  Keep it from the Order. The short: there is a cure for the Calling.”  She heard his sharp intake of breath, but the words kept tripping out. “It’s more dangerous for non-mages, more dangerous the longer you’ve been Tainted.  We may be able to work with the Architect to learn more…I don’t know yet if we can use it on the Awakened to free them from the Taint as well as the Calling. They were born with it, it’s likely to kill them.”  She thought. “You already know about Corypheus and the demon who’s grown fat on the fears of the Blight. One last thing: Morrigan knows a way to end a Blight, to take down an Archdemon, without needing a Warden’s sacrifice.”  Even now, she couldn’t say more – especially now that she’d seen the letter from Alistair, heard how he’d met his son, how Morrigan had softened and raised him in love and with only good words, if few, of who his father had been.

“You mean – the Archdemon Urthemial, that’s how you survived?  This mage gave you a way that didn’t sacrifice a Warden’s soul with the Old God’s?”

“Yes.  But none of that matters right now.  All that matters is keeping the knowledge, studying it, and making sure it isn’t swallowed by an Order that is willing to use any means to force another Warden to talk.”  Her voice turned cold.  “The Order has gone too far. Call on the Awakened.  I’ve felt them following me since I heard what happened., even though I’ve not been up to talking to them. They’ll help you.” She looked up at the hazy sunrise, tears filling her eyes, as she repeated the words from Alistair’s last letter.  “I can fix this, I swear. Nathaniel, I have to. It’s Alistair.”

The tall, dark Warden pulled her into a rough hug, and she wiped her face on his shirt.  “Then you will, my lady. And if even an Archdemon can’t stand up to you two, the Order won’t either.”  His voice had gotten more worn, but it was still Nathaniel.  “Just be careful how much you share. The Order will protect itself.”

She sniffled once, then put her fear, her hope, her love in a tiny locked corner of her heart.  There wasn’t time for it any longer. “You’re right, Nathaniel. But they  _ will _ give me back my husband.  Or I will tear Weisshaupt down around us all.”  At this point, with what Avernus had taught her and what she’d learned…especially with Alistair and the Calanhad bloodline close enough to call on, she probably could.

**

“Warden-Commander Alissa of Fereldan, here to see the Council.”  They were the only words she’d spoken to a stream of steadily more senior Wardens.  She had no pack, kept her cloak over her armor, her staff comfortably, loosely in her hand.  It towered over her like the warriors around her.  But she’d done what they hadn’t: she’d faced down an Archdemon itself, faced down a Queen in full rage, faced down…she wouldn’t think of her odd ally, not here.

Finally, the Council heard her.  Alissa ignored the shouted questions and threats.  She stood in an empty circle, their chairs…thrones…towering over her.   _ Fools.  All that height means is it’s easier to knock you down.  I’ve been towered over my entire life – do you think I care anymore? _

“Wardens.  Seniors of the Order.  I’ve come to collect one of my own.  He brought a message to you. I’m assuming in the last two and a half years, even Alistair’s figured out how to string the correct words together well enough for you to understand it.  I managed in just a week, but I have more experience with him.” Her voice bit, and she watched a handful pale in rage. Worse, in their minds and better for her…a quiet rustle of chuckles came from the other Wardens.

Weisshaupt’s Warden-Commander spoke.  His voice might be deep and cold, but he’d never been in the Wilds, marched through the frozen muck.  “There are other things we need from you. How the Archdemon fell and what happened in Amaranthine.”

“I’ve already told you both.  The Archdemon died when I stuck it with a sword.”  She shrugged. “I’d guessed Warden Riordan had somehow survived the fall just enough to take it with him – we burned his body in ceremony.  I don’t know why the soul would have travelled so far, but Riordan had little time to pass on the Order’s knowledge before the battle. I assume something about how he had forced it to ground?”  She was too old these days to play the naif, but stuck to that. She had been a Warden less than a year then and knew nothing of the secrets, so therefore couldn’t answer their questions.

_ “Lies!”  _ The shout came from another of the Council, and her eyes narrowed as she saw the faint sword still etched in his armor.  This one had been a Templar, in his previous life; she saw the old distrust of magic in his eyes. She discounted the fact she actually was lying this time.

“You say that, but you weren’t there.  What use are lies? The Archdemon is a decade dead: if Urthemial hadn’t been stopped by a Grey Warden, he would have re-emerged years ago.  We all would have heard his song in our dreams.” She turned back to her fellow Commander. “And in Amaranthine, we must have had a chunk of the Horde tunnel back to the surface somehow.  They do that, you know. They were led by an Emmisary, perhaps that’s why they stayed together. But why they went there – are Darkspawn still attracted to Wardens, still recognize us, outside a Blight?  I’ve never gotten an answer to that.”

“Immaterial.  What they did shouldn’t have happened.”

“And neither should keeping a fellow Warden.  Bring him here. Now.”

A silky smile from the Templar.  “He is being questioned, since you wouldn’t answer.  He will. So will you, if the right…pressure…is applied.”

“I have answered.”  She ignored the chill at his other words.  What had been done to her love?

“Tranquil don’t lie, little mage.”

_ So he actually says it.  Will the Wardens tolerate it in the open?   _ “So this is what the Order comes to?”  She spoke toward the Commander, but to the massed Wardens.  “Threatening to strip the mind of a fellow Warden Commander, torture a senior Warden, for what?  Because a paranoid man soon to face his Calling thinks they should know more?” Her voice was cold, and got softer – she saw Wardens lean forward from the corner of her eye as she slipped deeper into the Taint in her blood, the twisted song that connected them all.  This must have been how Corypheus got to them. “One of the Seven was loose and awake because the Order failed. Secrets and lies – how many here knew he’d been held for Ages by the Order?  He almost destroyed the world and used the Order to do it. What makes you think the other six aren’t still out there? You know I have allies: the mad Queen would have exiled the Order again otherwise.   _ Don’t threaten me when you don’t know what I can do.” _  The last was in a carrying whisper, and she saw their eyes change.

The Templar attempted to nullify her magic: she shot him back into his seat with a gesture and the pulse of taint in her blood, her staff staying planted at her side.  His head hit the back of the chair with a satisfying crunch, and he slumped.

“Look at what you’ve become.”  Her voice was vicious now.  “From saviors of Thedas to old men afraid of their shadows, afraid to speak truth even to their brothers in Taint and death.  In Peace, Vigilance. In War, Victory. In Death, Sacrifice. Join us, brothers and sisters…is this all those words mean to you?” She was so close to turning the listening Wardens, and the Commander saw it.

“Bring the Warden Alistair.  Give him to this woman. There are no longer Wardens in Orlais and Ferelden.  If they wish to risk everything, they can take it. They were corrupted by Corypheus and have sold themselves to the Inquisition.  They are Wardens no more.”

_ I can fix this.  I can use this.  _ Alissa waited as they brought out a shambling, bloody figure dressed in cheap clothes.  She didn’t reach out; she couldn’t comfort him, not here, no matter how her heart cracked in her chest. She focused again through the Taint  _ they  _ didn’t know how to use, and saw him steady on his feet.  Just a little - not enough to show on her skin.  Secrets and lies.  Her voice stayed casual.  “As you will. Ferelden and Orlais are independent of the Order.  Should any here wish to remain  _ real  _ Wardens, they can petition at Vigil’s Keep.  Alistair, with me.” She turned and walked out the long hallway with a steady pace, slow enough for him to hold.  Her hand trembled with the need to support him when he’d kept their secrets and paid a terrible price – but she had to save them both first.

They followed Nathaniel’s faint whisper past the line of trees, the sense of taint as their dark allies circled in the shadows.  She was finally able to breathe.  She reached for him as he collapsed. “I’m here, love. You’ll be ok.” Alissa poured mana into Wonder recklessly, begging it to heal him.  He clenched his teeth as his dislocated shoulder shifted back into place with an audible pop and nose straightened, then let out a pained grunt as the bones in his left hand re-broke and set properly.  The wounds closed, his eyes brightened…but nothing she knew could restore his ear or wipe away the scars and burns she saw through the torn cloth.

“As delicate as a brick to the face as always, my love.  The Order abandoned the South? Did I hear Mr. Important correctly?”

Her lips twitched at his so-familiar tone, whispered though it was.  “Clean water, please.” An acknowledgement from one of the Awakened, and a rough container was brought to her.  She tore his sleeve, used it to wipe his face until he took it from her. “Yes, you did. I’ll fix this, I swear.”

“That sounds like  _ my _ line, Rose.”  He pulled her close, kissed her gently.  That was when she dared look into his eyes and realized how much he’d changed.  “Send to Morrigan, she promised she’d answer. The Inquisitor will support us.  She’s already is in Orlais.”  Tears spilled down her eyes as he spoke a name she hadn’t heard since the night, the ritual, since the secrets had truly begun. “Oh, no, please don’t cry!” His voice got a touch of panic.  “Not my Rose, not the woman who eats Genlocks for breakfast!”

A throat cleared from the shadows of the firs.

“I meant unAwakened Genlocks, of course.”  Alistair’s hurried correction made Alissa giggle faintly as the silence settled again.   _ “We  _ can fix this, Liss.  I swear.”

“We can fix this.”  Her heart sang at those words, the burdens suddenly lighter as she curled up in his arms.  “All of you, please go somewhere else. And look the other way for an hour or two.” A chuckle from the one human, a dropped pack for ‘later,’ and the flickers of taint moved further in the forest.  “Now, let’s get you out of those ratty things.”

**

They sat around a tiny fire, several days from any civilization.  Alissa had already asked their escort to go further out so the Wardens could have some privacy.  They weren’t happy, but she’d asked for it often enough. She pulsed reassurance to them and nodded at her two Wardens as she came back, but kept her voice low as the spring kept burbling next to them.

“Alistair, what did they ask?”  And what did you tell - but that was something that could wait.

Nathaniel, on the other side, set down his rabbit quarter and turned to face them.  

He sighed but stretched his legs, still being careful with how he moved.  “You need the answers too, I’m sure.  So let me give you what I can remember, because I don’t want to more than once.  Next time someone else can volunteer for drugs and torture.  Some I expected, Urthemial at the top of the list. They didn’t like my ‘I dunno, Riordan?’ answer, though.  I guess it’s been too long since I played stupid around them. Something about the strange Darkspawn attacks that stopped at the Keep, but they may have believed me when I said I wasn’t there and that sleeping with me doesn’t mean you’d tell me anything important.”

Alissa winced at that one, too close to the truth despite his light tone, but Alistair was still talking, looking at the dancing flames rather than her.

“They asked a couple times about whatever it was up in Kirkwall you kept sending Nathaniel and I to deal with in the Deep Roads.  Harder, and I couldn’t put them off. So I told them that talking Darkspawn said they found something important.” His teeth shone as Nathaniel was startled into a huffed chuckle.  “They quit using herbs and potions for some reason. Eventually, I admitted I’d discovered you had a cousin, and wanted to check up on her as a surprise for you.” He glanced over, suddenly nervous.  “I - it had been a year or more by then? I don’t remember, things got blurry. You said it’s been two and a half years, and I can hardly believe it.”

Alissa shook her head.  “I know she’s gone now, Alistair, far out of their reach. I found that out when I met up with the Inquisitor and discovered you never came back.”  Her eyes filled with tears; she blinked them back before he could see how much they’d changed. “Maker guide her path.” She kissed the palm he pressed against her cheek, and tried to go back to business.  “I assume you told them everything about Adamant and the Nightmare? Did you also tell them what you’d learned of Corypheus?”

He slid his hand down to hers and pulled until she scooted over to sit sheltered against him, her back resting against his torso.  Even with him on his side, she didn’t stick up much past the end of his ribs. She wouldn’t talk about her feelings until she was ready, but he could at least let her know he was here.  “Yes, I did - that was before things got...unpleasant.” He stroked her hair. “I had no reason not to tell them everything I knew. They wanted more.” He gave the fire a long look.

“Nathaniel, shouldn’t you...I don’t know, check on our sentries or something?”  He didn’t notice that this time, Nathaniel simply nodded rather than looking to Alissa.

“Alistair, what is it?”

He looked up at her profile.  “There’s another thing I kept from the Order, though this one was easy because they didn’t think to ask.”  He took a deep breath as he looked at her profile. What did he see in the firelight?  The girl he’d first met, scared of all the space but too afraid to show it, who delighted in flowers and even camp cooking?  “Liss, Rose...I met Morrigan before going to Adamant.”  She breathed in sharply at the name that had been unspoken for ten years. “I met Kieran, my -  _ our  _ \- son.  He’s...a good kid, curious and everything.”   _ Was it his smile, looking out of a boy’s face? _  “And she’s changed.  A lot - even Leliana mentioned it.  I shouldn’t be shocked - I know I have.  You’ve been my light in the darkness for so long, but you deserve someone who can not just make you laugh, but stand with you the way we did against Loghain and the Archdemon.  She was planning on staying until Corypheus was defeated - I guess she headed off again then. But she promised to return your...our...letters.”

“Alistair?”  A word forced out through a tight throat, as he brought up the very people he’d refused to mention for ten years.  He plowed on.

“I said she’s changed – or I finally saw what you always did in her.  She’s gentle with him, clearly loves him.  He doesn’t know I’m his da - she even offered, but I needed to ask you first.”  He met her disbelieving eyes and pretended not to notice her trembling fingers.  He hurried on.  “This isn’t the drugs - the Wardens stopped those a long time ago.  It’s - while you were gone, I actually tried thinking.”  He gave a wan smile, lifted her left hand and kissed it, lips brushing the ring he’d had made.  “We’ve had thirteen at least partly together that Morrigan gave us.  We should give her something back.  Who would look for an apostate and her son in Vigil’s Keep?  If you want.  I think...I’d like to get to know them better.”


	3. Family, in a Manner of Speaking

Alissa’s eyes had gotten their distant look - she was working on something again.  “Liss?”  Alistair touched her cheek.

“Oh!”  She refocused, looked at him.  “Alistair...I think we have a problem.”

A snort.  “Did Kieran get into the ale again?”

Her eyes widened.  “Again?”

“Um.  Nevermind.  We have a problem?”

“Alistair, who gave your son ale?”

“No one!  No one...at least, no one will admit it.”  He sighed.  “Fine.  It was Francis.”  He couldn’t hide truth - and neither could the young Warden recruit.  Not now that they’d learned how to use the Taint - and not since Liss came back.  It was taking getting used to.  “Sigrun dealt with it.  The problem?”

She sighed.  “I’ve thought more about the Taint, about Corypheus...and about what I’ve seen here, and with our Awakened.  About what I felt at Weisshaupt.  What we need to do, to protect us.  Part of how we do what we do is feeling through the Taint, but there has to be a way to separate us from the broader mind.”  She chewed on her braid.  The Cure she’d found...and hadn’t had the courage to use on anyone yet - was more information.  “There’s got to be some way to protect our Wardens from any other Magisters out there so I don’t have to have the Divine make good on her threat.”  Most of the Wardens didn’t know she’d  _ asked  _ the new Divine to declare an Exalted March against the Order if she failed.  But where?  The Architect had been useful, she knew better than to trust him, right?  “I need to go to Soldier’s Peak.”

“But Morrigan...Kieran.”

She smiled.  “Are doing just fine.  I talked some of this out with her, and we looked at it with Caller and Petal.  But I need more, and that means Avernus.  He’s the oldest Warden I’ve heard of, and seeing how he connects…” she shrugged.  “I’d...like you to stay here, to keep an eye on things.  Let you and Kieran have more time together - maybe I’ll ask Morrigan to join me.”

Alistair pulled her close.  “At least it’s not far.  You won’t be gone long?”

“No, love.  I’ll even take the Awakened’s path so the mad queen doesn’t know.”  She raised her face as his resistance melted and he leaned down. 

**

The Awakened weren’t happy, and grew less so the closer they got.  “Warden-mother.”

“Cuddles, what is it?”  She ignored Morrigan’s startled look...they took a lot of getting used to, and her sister-in-spirit had adapted far better than many of her Wardens.

The ogre shifted, then sat.  “The stone is blood-soaked there.  Being dangerous.”

Now that he was only a foot and a half taller, she could meet his eyes more easily.  Hazel into shimmery gold-and-black...but you could make out his pupils.  Another sign of what she’d done.  Uneasiness.  Fear?  She cocked her head, listened through the song in their blood.  Yes.  Something had happened...he was afraid.  But for her?  “Dear, Avernus can’t do anything to me.”

“He lies.”

Her eyes darkened; all the Awakened tensed, and Morrigan shifted uneasily at the sight.  Watching how the Wardens acted...took a great deal of time to grow accustomed.  Alissa knew that.  She pulled the Taint back and her eyes cleared.

“Not to me, he won’t.  All of you, stay out.  You’ll hear the call if you’re needed.  Morrigan and I will deal with him.”

**

She could smell the blood and pain when she went into the fortress.  Corrupted blood, Tainted blood.  There shouldn’t be so much.  Her anger rose - but she’d learned back in Kinloch to hide it.  And had kept her skills honed as Warden-Commander.  She needed him.  Then, she’d get answers.

**

“So, I think it will work.”  Morrigan’s knowledge of forbidden arts had been a boon.  “I don’t think that will tie everyone to my life, mostly because the ritual in its original form never did.  And it doesn’t make sense that it would, not really.  The collective has always continued; even after the death of the Archdemon, for instance.”

“It should, yes.”  The wispy man had a wispier voice than before...but she could sense the whine, the uneasiness.  He’d lived long and pushed beyond what the Circle taught, but he was still stubborn enough to believe in the nonsense of ‘schools’ of magic.  Well, that was why she also talked to Morrigan.

“So I need you to try it.  You’ve got the strongest connection.  Besides, what’s a bit more blood to you?”  She kept her voice light, the biting sarcasm out of it...he felt just a hint, she could see the wariness.  But he couldn’t refuse.

It didn’t take long, not with Morrigan watching.  The cup...Alissa opened her palm, let two mouthfuls fall before Wonder healed it.  A couple drops - oh, Alistair wouldn’t be thrilled, but she understood the bloodlines now - and then lyrium, thin and blue.  Morrigan watched, wisps of the Fade surrounding her, as Alissa and Wonder reached into the goblet, whispered the last of the modified ritual, forced the connections.

“Drink, Avernus.  Don’t worry - it shouldn’t have any negative effects.”

The shadowed fortress - flickering torches almost hid the uncertain swallow.  But she’d set it up correctly, and he had no real choice.   _ Wardens do what is necessary.  You helped teach me that.  Now deal with it.   _ He took the cup, drank as she and Wonder looked on; wisps of light flowed from her, as Morrigan’s own magic watched and monitored.

Alissa’s eyes rolled back as Avernus’ did, shifted dark.   _ Whispers...the song, shattered and doubled.  A presence in the back of her mind, like her Awakened, but different.  Uncertain, faint.  Connected to both songs...she snapped the further thread.   _ Avernus collapsed as she and Wonder fought against the Taint, struggled to control it, to push it back.  She reached out, her mouth tasted what was left in the goblet...the Calenhad blood, dragon bloodline, warring with the Taint...the key,  _ a  _ key.  A way to control it...control, not eliminate.  Her eyes cleared, returned to hazel.  She took a shaky breath, then nodded at Morrigan.  “Next time, drink first.”  A shaky smile, that the other mage returned. “Either way, it worked.  Just...a bit iffier than I’d hoped.”

“Planning, sister, is a good idea.”

“Planning, sister, is overrated.  Besides, this is new.  There’s no real way to predict things, it’s just...seeing what happens.”  A bright smile, even if it was razor-edged.  “I’m remarkably good at that.”

Shadows of her Awakened were reflected in Morrigan’s golden eyes.  “You appear to be, against all logic.”

“And now...time to find out what Avernus has been doing in my absence.”  The razors were all that was left of her smile.

**

In the basement, she found them.  The rusty, rotten, stale air hadn’t changed much, but there was more.  Corruption; the dried liquid long since blending into the floor.  She knelt.  Turned over the first corpse, saw the scar across a blind eye.  The corpse next to him, with a white khaddis brand across its shoulder.  Slash.  Petal.  Three others.

_ Alistair paused, looked to the south with concerned eyes.  Other Wardens stiffened, uneasy at what whispered across their spines.  Beneath the ‘abandoned’ fortress, golden-black eyes, hissed voices, as the rage flowed.  Above, a Warden long past his time whimpered. _

Morrigan watched as the tiny redhead’s eyes filmed black and Alissa dropped further into the connection between their minds, the Taint that bound them.  No, not all.  Just one.  One very  _ particular  _ lesson needed to be taught.  Even with the Calenhad blood in his body, there was no resistance as her veins darkened and shadows spread across her skin.

_ The ancient mage alone in his rooms screamed in agony as his eyes ran black.  “They were Darkspawn!” _

“They were mine.”  Her cold voice worried her sister, especially since she was clearly talking to someone else.  She’d explain later.

_ “Corrupt!  Mindless!” _

“I spared you for your knowledge, but with one requirement.  And they had minds, spirits.”

_ “Forgive me!” _

Alissa paused, considered as the Taint pulsed against her skin.  “No.”  Her eyes slitted, almost hiding the darkness that creeped into them from her rage, from the Taint.

_ Agonizing screams as the Taint poured out of him, withering him.  He collapsed, his back arching as his skin stiffened and tendons showed stark. _

The razored edges around Alissa eventually faded, along with the screams in her mind.  She closed her eyes, clenched her jaw.  “Morrigan.”  Her voice was quiet.  “Fire, please.”  She would send them, as their brothers, in fire and light.   _ May the Maker accept you as His own.  You had no choice in your corruption, but chose to help against it.   _ Her eyes streamed charcoal tears as she held her sister-in-spirit’s hand, and watched them collapse into ash.

“And now?”  Morrigan gently broke the silence.

Alissa sighed.  “And now.  I find all of his notes, and tear this place to the ground.  The Drydens will appreciate that, and the Veil is too weak to use it for anything but what I had.”  She shook her head.  “Oh, my children.  I never meant for you to pay for the knowledge I needed.”  Morrigan watched her summon up the strength she’d relied on during the Blight and after to deal with Queen Anora.  “Now to summon my Wardens.  And the rest of my children.”

**

Vigil’s Keep was full, tents spilling over the grounds and people packed into the outbuildings.  Every Warden in the South.  And underneath were her Awakened.  All of them.  The song of so many minds almost overwhelmed her senses.

“Morrigan.  Kieran.”  She leaned into Alistair.  “I...please, go to Amaranthine.  Spend time with Delilah, or wander in the Wending Wood or something.  Just let me know where, and know it will be at least a few days.”  She sighed.

Kieran slumped.  “You don’t want me here any longer?”  His confusion broke her heart, though watching Alistair reach out with Morrigan to each clasp a shoulder helped.

“No, not at all!  We offered you our home, we meant it.”  Alistair pushed his chin up.  “Even when you sneak alcohol.  Or fall through the roof.”  A watery chuckle.

Alissa continued.  “This is Warden business, and dangerous.  We love you both enough to need to know you’re safe, Kieran.”  The word was still new on her tongue, but old enough for it to be natural - and true.  The boy was a delight, with Alistair’s spark of mischief and adventure, Morrigan’s cleverness, and a nobility all his own.  She kissed the top of his head as he grumbled, then met her sister-in-spirit’s eyes.  Her sister, who knew what she was about to do.  Who kept the knowledge of the Cure, just in case.  At least this time she had more.  She’d found a High Dragon, one the Inquisitor had let live on the coast.  And live she still did.

It would work, she told herself, feeling the Awakened reflect confidence.

**

Wardens surrounded her.  The gates to the Keep were locked - only Wardens remained.  They packed the great hall, except for the section left open.

“What is the meaning of this?”  One shouted voice.

Alissa raised her head, standing on the small podium so people could see her, still leaning on her staff.  “The meaning is truth, brothers.  Truth, and sacrifice, and oaths.”  She took a deep breath, taking strength from Alistair beside her, Nathaniel meeting her gaze from the other side of the Hall.  “I know how Corypheus corrupted us.”  Shouts.  She slammed her staff into the stone, the  _ crack  _ echoing.  “I will show you.”  Another breath, and she drifted into the Taint in her blood, surrounding her.  Shadows started to trace her veins as she reached up into everyone within the room.  A blaze of Wonder flared so she could watch the others respond.  A few shouted, others went silent, stunned.  She kept the connection, but let her grip on it fade, her skin return to normal.  She ignored the bitter taste in her mouth - part of the cost of using the Taint.  “We are connected.  Through the Taint, through the Song of the Magisters Sidereal, though not the Old Gods.  Yes,  _ Magisters.  _  And only one has been killed.  All of you felt his death.”  Shock and silence.  “You did not realize, did you.  But he was not the only one.  I know of at least one other still alive...and where there are two, others of the Seven may be as well.”  Were.  She could hear the different strains, when she’d drifted too far into corruption.

“What then?  How do we defend against the very thing that lets us protect Thedas?”  Panic - Alistair soothed it before he answered in a casual voice.  Only she noticed the faint shadow of Taint against his eyes - it didn’t affect him as it did her.  “By shattering the connection, of course.”

“Is that possible?”  A woman’s voice - Orlesian.

Nathaniel answered.  “Yes.”

“How do you know?”

Alissa took things back.  “More secrets.  These you will not like, but we are done with secrets.  Trust me and wait.”  She closed her eyes, and called.  Her children came up from the basements, into the space left.  Chaos reigned again.

“Darkspawn!”

She and a half-dozen of her mages slapped up barriers just as the first strikes came.  At least the disaster of Adamant meant there were not many mages who hadn’t already known.   _ “Enough. _  Listen!”

Cuddles and Grumpy held up their enormous hands.  Caller and the rest bowed before he spoke for them, his voice rasping.  “We are different.  Awakened.  We are free of the Old Gods, and being help to the Wardens against the unAwakened.”

Alissa shouted.   _ “This  _ is how I know the call can be broken!”

A perky if resigned voice came from near the Awakened.  “And they’ve been responsible for eighty-four broodmothers killed.”

Cuddles rumbled.  “Ninety-one.”

“The others don’t count.  We’d almost found that nest ourselves.”

Alistair smothered a chuckle as Alissa watched the argument...but it did as much as her words to settle the initial shock.

Warden-Commander Desiree turned back to Alissa.  “Then what is it you called us for, Warden-Commander?  And why only the South?”

Alissa tightened her lips.  “I called you because that connection must be broken for us.  All of us.  Together.  It’s the only way to keep knowledge from escaping through the song before we’re ready.  As to the South...because for the moment we are free of any influence, and this is a small window to claim.”  She thought they were, sent the Awakened through all the roads they could find, to make sure the Architect was further away.  “Enough.  You are all Wardens.  You have all sacrificed.  This is one more sacrifice.”  She gestured to the basin behind her, smoking with magic and warmth.  “It is like the Joining, but different.  It shouldn’t be fatal, but will hurt.”

“And how do we know  _ you’re  _ not under some influence?  Clarel was!”

Alissa sighed.  “You’ve heard about Weisshaupt.  That’s how.  Because I resisted the mass mind and mass song then.  Oh, and because some of this knowledge came from beyond the Continent, where I was the only Tainted creature as far as I could sense.  Yes, I found a Cure.”  Her voice quieted.  “No, this is not yet the time.   _ That  _ is dangerous.  But there will be no more Final Callings, if the Maker is kind.  Finally, I said so.  There’s always a loop.  There’s always an edge.  Most mages just don’t look hard enough to find it.  Now, then.”  She reached with Wonder, whispered the spell, forced the final steps into the concoction, calm through the Taint, partnered with Alistair and even Nathaniel.

“Alistair.”

He brought out cups, set them by the basin, filled one.  “Are you sure, Liss?”  His voice was only for her.

She swallowed.  She’d rested days for this, she and Wonder.  “Yes.”  She had to be.

His voice, insistent, carried through the room.  “Join us, brothers and sisters.  Join us as we watch the shadows - but are watched no longer.  Join us as we forge a new connection, break that of the songs of the past.  Should you perish, know you will live on through the connection.  All of us, one.”  He held the cup to her, and she drank.

The blood, the power, the dragon’s awareness of the Taint filled her as her eyes slid black, then returned to hazel.  She did the same to Alistair.  The presence in her mind, the whisper of the two songs...she waited as the cups passed around, as more and more eyes shifted to darkness, as the songs became overpowering.  She may be small, but that had never mattered.  She drew on her strength, Wonder’s strength,  _ their  _ strength through the Taint to stay standing.  Her Awakened, who were only connected to her, supported her as only they could.  A whisper filled the room as the Wardens began to fall to their knees.  Nathaniel and Sigrun were the last.  They nodded to her as they drank the final dregs.

The shouting din in her mind - hands gripped her shoulders tight enough to bruise.  Alistair, his hazel eyes were dark-rimmed, not black.   _ Calenhad.   _ He nodded, and her skin turned to charcoal as she and Wonder grabbed the Songs that left the room.  Screams rang against stone as they ripped them asunder, unweaving the threads, leaving only one Song, a pure, clean tone, in the background.  Hers.  His.  It called, thrumming through her.  She  _ was  _ the Song... _ it  _ Sung  _ her.   _

“Fight it, Liss.”  A whisper in her ear.  “Come back to me, Rose, my love.”  A body pressed against her, warmth against her cheek.  Her harsh breaths, as she raised her face to see through the bloody, blackened haze...lips, warm and firm, against hers.  “Liss.”  His strength and determination pouring into her.  Nathaniel.  Sigrun.  Cuddles.  Dozens of others, now that they knew the way.  Those she’d trained.  Her children.  Heartbeat by heartbeat, she used the dragon’s gift woven into their combined determination; it forced the Taint back, beat by heartbeat.  Her skin paled again, her eyes returned to hazel.  He watched with concern, waiting for the final black rim to vanish...it did not, but only a hairs-breadth remained.

She rested her head against his chest like so many times before, trying to not fear what she’d felt in her blood.  She forced herself back up.  “Connected.  Joined in truth, brothers and sisters.”  Her sharp voice was raw with their screams.

“Connected.”  A rustling whisper through the room - connected, but not one.  Each mind still its own.  She breathed a sigh of relief.

“And now, we can fight the Seven themselves.”


	4. The History

Morrigan smiled at them as she and Kieran returned, as the boy ran into Alissa’s arms before getting thrown over Alistair’s shoulder.  “Da!  I’m too old for that, you know better!”

Alistair groaned and shifted so he could ‘fall’ with a loud thump, but the boy was safe.  “You’re too big, too!  Much too old, especially with all the running and climbing you do.  Wait...isn’t it your birthday soon?”

Alissa felt tears on her lashes as he called her husband ‘Da,’ and even she couldn’t tell if they were happy or sad.  Two Wardens poked their heads out of the Keep’s windows, and she fought for control so she could send reassurance.  This was going to take time to adjust.

Morrigan looked up as well, then back at the short redhead next to her.  “I shall take that as a success.  Yes, Alistair, his birthday is in less than a week.”

“What do you want, Kieran?  We don’t have much, but you’re turning fourteen.  That’s important.”  Her sharp voice was husky with the remnants of tears, the ones she fought to keep out of her mind, out of the Song.

“I want to know about the Archdemon.  Urthemiel.  About the battle, how you all became heroes and saved Denerim!”  He stood and started whacking at Alistair with a stick.  “You attacked him, right?  Mama...mother...she told me that he’d landed on a high tower, and you worked together!”

Alissa remembered the terror, the bone-deep awe and fear and the Song thrumming through her bones, her desperate prayer that Morrigan had been right.  She’d kept her sister close, worried that if Morrigan was too far, the ritual and her betrayal of Alistair would be for naught.  And Alistair, the man she’d fallen in love with, who would still not meet her eyes, who spoke coldly to her until after Morrigan was gone, and they had left Denerim after the feasting and the mourning.  But that - that was more than a boy needed to hear.  He wanted adventure, excitement.  “You don’t want to just hear the story again, do you?”

His eyes, so like Alistair’s, sparkled.  “No!  I want to be there - it wasn’t just the three of you, was it?  Could I pretend to be...the Raven?  The skylark?  No, the Crow.  That’s it!  The elf!”

Alistair chuckled.  “Zevran?  He’d love that.  Sure - we can find a way to make that all work.  The Main Hall?  We’ll act it all out!”

Alissa snapped her head as she felt the whispers come closer; one of her Awakened.  And then he came closer - it was Flick.  Alistair had looked shortly after she did though Morrigan’s attention was somewhere else.  On Kieran...was the same focused look as his father.  Focused, but curious.  Interesting.

“Aunt Liss?  What is different about him?  He feels like you, but...not?”

Alissa’s breath caught.  “Here, love.  Let me cut your hand, just a little?”  With so many Wardens still here, she didn’t trust her senses, but she and Wonder still slipped into the Taint as he put his hand in hers,  _ so trusting, a _ nd she drew a thin line with her dagger.  It was just enough for a few drops of blood to come out.  A hint.  A whisper of Taint...but nothing more.  A resonance, but no Song.  “You can feel us?”

Kieran nodded as she healed the cut on his hand.  “Just a bit.  There’s - you’re familiar.  I know when you’re close.  Here it’s harder because there are so many, but I can’t feel you far.”

Flick came closer, staying away from Morrigan.  Alissa turned to the Genlock.  “Flick.  Who here is unTainted?  Who must you be careful around?”

He sniffed.  “A test, Warden-Mother?  Not a fun test.  The witch with whispers.  She sings her own song, but it is being different.  Hard to hear.  The short one...not a dwarf, no, the Son.  He is, and is not?  He calls but does not.  Echoes.  Safe.”

Kieran stared back, wide-eyed.  “Darkspawn?  Mother?  Da?”

They nodded, but it was Morrigan who spoke.  “Kieran, remember your dreams?  You are special.  You are safe around them - but only the ones who can talk.”  He nodded, and reached out to Flick.

“You’re different, aren’t you?”

Flick gave a toothy grin, and Alissa spared a moment to thank the spirits that the later Awakened were less monstrous, closer to the races they’d come from.  He had predator teeth, but nothing worse than that - and his voice was almost normal, with just a hint of the rasp she’d grown so accustomed to.  “Of course, Song-son.  But so are you.  I am being Awakened.  Darkspawn, but not.”

Kieran giggled, and touched the Genlock’s face.  “Your skin is grey and painted.”

“Khaddis.”

Alistair spoke then, tenor voice firm.  “Enough, both of you.  Flick, you think it’s safe but that’s enough for now.”

Kieran’s eyes lit up.  “Wait - if they’re Darkspawn, can they help tell the story?  I’m safe, you all say so.  They can help, right?”  He bounced.  “We can do a performance!”

Flick tipped his head to one side, and Morrigan stifled a smile at his mirroring of his  ‘Warden-mother’s’ gestures.  Her eyes danced as she realized Alissa had seen.  “What is performance?  We are helping the Warden-mother always.”

Alissa broke into giggles as Alistair’s eyes crossed.  She got control of her voice, mostly, and tried to answer.  “It is a...a showing of a story.  People pretend to be the people, animals, of the story, and...and…”

“And act it out.”  Alistair added in a strangled voice.  Kieran started bouncing.  “Pretend.”

Flick gave another toothy smile.  “We will be helping the Dragon-Warden and Warden-mother, yes.  Boggart wanted to learn of story-telling more after the stories of the Dragon-Warden and Silent Warden.”  He nodded.  “We will be helping, yes.”

**

Alissa and Alistair met with the Awakened in the basement - those who wanted to ‘be helping.’  Flick and Boggart, as they’d expected - but Cuddles and Grumpy were there, too.  Alistair stared helplessly at her.

“What’re we going to do, Liss?”

She shrugged back, but her eyes were alight.  “Give Kieran the performance of a lifetime, love.  We don’t really need those black tablecloths that came from Bann whatever-his-name-is, do we?  Not the battle for Denerim - Urthemiel’s final stand.  Morrigan will be able to stay far enough away, and they…”

Alistair lit up, too.  “They’ll make an amazing Archdemon.  Rose, you’re brilliant!”

Grumpy gave him a flat look.  “I not be Archdemon, I be Grumpy.”

“I know, I know - this is a story-telling.  If all of you...yes, we can cut and sew the cloth, so you together can appear as Urthemiel, under the cloth.”  Alistair’s smile was infectious enough that Cuddles and Boggart were already grinning - not a sight for the faint-hearted, but something the two had grown used to.  “Urthemiel, the Archdemon of the last Blight - a fearsome Dragon, that required all the efforts of the four of us to defeat!  He roared flames, and his wings blocked out the sun!”  Alistair’s gestures had gotten grand, and Grumpy followed them.  “Magnificent, terrifying, and utterly set on the destruction of all of us.”  He blinked, and added hastily, “You have to play out the story, though, where after hard work, Urthemiel was defeated.”  Alistair’s eyes narrowed.  “Wait a minute, Liss...Urthemiel had wings...oh!  The spear handles!  Or even the fishing poles...we can make a framework, I’m sure of it...if we lash it together…”

Alissa just laughed.  “Enough, enough!  That’s for you to do, not me.  Woodsmith may be able to help.  He’s been looking for a new project.  And a mask for whoever is Urthemiel’s head.  Ok, I’m going back up, I promised Kieran we could garden some this afternoon.  The other Wardens should be leaving over the next couple days, unless they should stay?”

Alistair’s eyes were distant - Kieran had let them both just have fun at times, she reflected.  “Yes...well, maybe a few, if they’re still wary of the Awakened, but this is for Kieran, not them.”  He kept muttering.  “Paint, and...maybe Hans can help with…”

Alissa gave him a kiss, the Awakened a cheery wave and pulse of gratitude, and she went back up to her sister and her nephew.

**

Some of the Orlesian Wardens had stayed.  The ‘performance’ had been moved out to the courtyard, where tables acted as the various towers on Fort Drakon.  Kieran almost filled out the studded leather Veranein had lent to the performance, wooden daggers in his hands.  They’d skipped the helm because it kept falling over his eyes.  Morrigan’s voice carried, despite its low tone, as she set the stage.

“...and so the Wardens Alissa and Alistair led the way up the final stairs, knowing what awaited them above, the Taint pulsing a warning in their blood.”   _ Here  _ she could tell the whole story, even what the Wardens hid.

Alistair had actually dug out the old Warden-Commander armor he’d used back then, still battered and scarred from that final fight.  It didn’t hide the sparkle in his eyes as he looked at his son, hastily-molded points on his ears and a charcoal-drawn tattoo mirroring that of Zevran.  Alissa dutifully led the way toward the ‘door’ (an opening from under the table) as she sent an alert pulse along the Taint, down the special bond she still had with her Awakened.  The assorted Wardens jumped as an enraged scream erupted from the shadowed Vigil.  Several scrabbled for their weapons, while the Vigil’s old hands smiled at the distinctive sound of Cuddles.

Out burst ‘Urthemiel,’ his carved head full of jagged teeth - broken practice daggers, she noted absently, and wondered how they’d stuffed them into the...Stone, that was a crocodile skull.  Where had they found  _ that?   _ It was painted black to match the draped tablecloths, and the four ‘feet’ visible had more daggers lashed in a circle around the ankles of...of...of Cuddles and Grumpy.  ‘Urthemiel’s’ neck turned and Boggart tossed a smoke grenade as Grumpy got in on the fun, letting out an ear-splitting roar from his position as the back half of the Archdemon.

Alissa managed to turn her laugh into a coug, and crawled out from under the table ‘door,’ Alistair not too far behind.  “Quickly!  Riordan has torn his wing, but he’s still trying to fly!  We must hurry to defeat this monstrous evil!”  As she shouted, she sent enough calm along the Taint to ensure the Wardens wouldn’t get involved.  A smattering of applause came out as Boggart twisted Urthemiel’s ‘head’ toward them and Grumpy roared again, determined to get in on the volume.

Morrigan caught up her place.  “The Warden led the armies as Alistair distracted Urthemiel, letting Zevran sneak behind him whilst I cast spell after spell, weakening and draining the beast.”  She and Alissa let out colored barriers, toothless wisps of magic.  Urthemiel’s ‘wings’ flapped, one of them snapping in half and sagging.  “And they were successful, for Urthemiel began to drop.”

But first, another colored grenade sent a puff of blue - putrid sulfur was clearly a part of it - and Kieran let out a delighted scream as he ‘attacked’ one of Urthemiel’s back legs.  “I got him!  I got him, mother - just like Zevran!”  He managed to dodge Grumpy’s kick before Flick muttered something enhanced by their group mind, and Cuddles let out another roar as he let the leg collapse.  Flick desperately flapped the ‘wings’ and Alistair choked a laugh as the broken one started shedding pieces, before remembering to ‘bash’ at his end of the beast, knocking out three teeth from Boggart’s mask and drawing a mutter and growl from the Hurlock, holding onto the chair he was using as a brace with one hand.

“As the beast dropped, defeated, the Warden Alissa grabbed a sword, and rushed him, driving it through his mind and ending his threat once and for all.”  Alissa mirrored those actions, and Boggart pulled back just before her sword crushed through the petrified skull, shattering it.  “Two Wardens, an Antivan Crow and an Apostate witch had done what had never been seen before: a Blight, ended before it began - and with only Riordan a Warden casualty.”

Kieran did a somersault and Alistair pulled him close.  “Now, Kieran, we get to bow!”  And they all lined up and bowed as Boggart stuck his head out of the wrappings and cackled a laugh befeore the deep voices of the Ogres deafened even the clapping audience.  Flick tumbled down - he’d been stretched between Cuddles and Grumpy - and came next to Alissa to bow as well.

The party ended when Nathaniel stood and mentioned there was a birthday feast inside the Vigil if the Awakened Urthemiel hadn’t knocked it over, and everyone started moving.  Kieran just stared, a huge grin on his face.  “Oh, thank you, thank you,  _ thankyou!   _ This was better than any birthday!”  He hugged the three of them, then Grumpy looked down, astonished, when Kieran wrapped both arms around his knee as well.  “Thank you, all of you!  I almost screamed when you came out!”

Alistair cleared his throat.  “Well, we should head in and let the Awakened get out of the sun.  Besides, they can’t start eating without  _ you,  _ since you’re the hero and guest of honor!”  Kieran grabbed his and Morrigan’s hands, and started towing them through the open doors.  It was all Alissa could do to wait long enough for them to vanish before falling down with giggles, echoed by the other Wardens as giggles, chuckles or smiles as fit their personalities. 

“Quite the performance, Warden-Commander.”  A quiet, rough voice was partnered with a clear upward turn of his lips - Nathaniel had been as charmed as anyone.  He held out a hand to Alissa, who stood.  “One for the histories, if it was safe to share.”

With just the two of them, and enough chaos that no one else would feel them if she was careful with her Song, she gave Nathaniel a smile before changing the subject.  “I have the Cure, Nathaniel.  Is it still ‘we’ if you have the choice?  You do, you know.”

She watched his jaw clench as he turned his head to the West - toward Val Royeaux, and the Sunburst Throne.  “I...I have been nothing else for so long.  But…”

Alissa nodded.  “Think on it, Nathaniel.  You have served, and served well.”


	5. Returning to Weisshaupt

Alissa could feel the difference when she crossed into the Anderfels.  Even beneath the Surface.  She tensed.

Grumpy turned to look at her.  “Warden-Mother?”  He dropped to one knee and lowered his horned head so he could get closer.

“Can’t you hear it?”  The song, one of the many braided through the darkness in her...but stronger, wildly dissonant and yet still seductive.  She winced at the echoes ringing back sharply.  How had she not noticed the last time? 

The Awakened with her all paused; she tried to moderate her unease as they reflected it back at her.  Sometimes, the connection caused problems - and moreso when it was her emotions.  The challenge of having created them was multiplied by what she and Alistair did to free the Wardens.

“Listen.  What songs do you hear?”  She leaned against her staff to drop deeper into the Taint.  As she cocked her head, letting her awareness spill out through the corruption, the Awakened with her mirrored her movements.  “What is closest, strongest?”  Listening.

A rasp.  “Dark.”

“Old.”  The rumble added to the conversation.

Another dissonant shriek that shifted into a smooth, soft harmony.  Alissa shuddered.  “Angry.”  She remembered the Song of Urthemiel, the way it shook along her bones.  This was...different.  It hummed in her blood, the back of her mind.  “I wonder,” she murmured, “what a normal Warden would feel?  Would sense?”  The Wardens.  “Are there any Wardens near?”

A few of the Hurlocks shifted, looking out.  The Genlocks sat near her as they all pieced through the different songs, the different connections.

“Cannot tell, Warden-Mother.  The connecting is not there.”  Caller looked at her.  “Is only through you?”

Alissa blinked, then sank down herself, staff across her knees, and whispered to Wonder.  They both glowed faintly.  She dropped further into the Taint they all carried, trying to do so without sending a ripple through the Songs, to feel for the connections: the hives of the Tainted.  She could tell the difference between Warden and Darkspawn, had been able to for years.  It was just a matter of reaching out.  “So many…”  Corruption below, near the Surface, all around them.  But those were Darkspawn.  She felt the shape of that hive, set it to one side, listened for the different hum of a Warden, living and Tainted, free of the Call of the Old Gods.  Fewer songs to listen to and softer Taint.

Gradually she picked out another song at the edge of hearing, from the direction of Weisshaupt...and even fainter down toward the Hunterfells.  Cold and hard with purpose, but...it harmonized with the louder song in her mind.  It shouldn’t do that, should it?  “By the Stone, what’s going on?”

“Not stone.  Singer...Tainted singer.”

She looked at Grumpy’s rumbling answer.  “I know...but the Wardens and the Songs, so similar.”  She hesitated, but it was only Awakened here, to hear the question.  And they would not wonder the way her Wardens would.  “Is mine?”

“Similar to the dark Song?  No, Warden-Mother.”

“So.  Get closer to the Wardens, or this dark Singer?”

“Warden-Mother.”  Caller’s rasp was insistent.  “Dangerous.  Your song is weaker so far from the Dragon-Warden.  Warden-Father.”  She could tell his unease and tension, thanks to the connection between all of them.  The others shifted in agreement.

“We need to know, Caller.  Is my song too weak for the Wardens?  It wasn’t, even before.”

Her children looked at each other, and she could feel their closer bond.  It must be the increased Taint or something about them.  They began with the connection, and only later were Awakened to individuality.  If only she really understood what she did, beyond ‘it worked.’  “Perhaps...perhaps not?  They are being unaware, and that will protect you some.”

Grumpy rumbled again, a spike of intensity through all of them.  “We being protecting you.”

Alissa chuckled briefly at the thought.  “No, you can’t come within range of Weisshaupt.  We discussed that before.  Normal range, not ours.  These Wardens will  _ not  _ react well to Darkspawn walking up to their home, you know that.”  Their resistance around her weakened at her determination.  “Sod it, someone needs to know what is happening.  Can anyone else hear the songs like I can?”

Sighs and rustles.  She stood up again, her staff lighting once more.  “Then let’s go closer.  Can the Singer feel us?”  She sensed no recognition.

The Awakened around her paused, then Caller shook his head.  “No, Warden-Mother.  Not yet.”

“Well, then.”

**

They stopped when the Awakened could sense the edge of the Wardens in their minds.  “From here, I need to go alone.”  Resistance, but it faded more quickly.  “A path to the Surface - we should be away from the roads.”

It didn’t take the Awakened long, not with Grumpy to hold things up as they dug.

Just before she reached the Surface, she looked back, tossing a dirty braid over her shoulder.  “You will hear me.”

“Be safe, Warden-Mother.  Calling on us if you need the strength.”

She patted Grumpy’s horn, the easiest thing to reach, knowing they all felt her exasperation - and affection.  “I will.  Stay hidden.”

**

Alissa kept part of her awareness deep in the connection around her, whispered calm into it softly, delicately.  They were shocked she came back.  “Alissa, to see the First Warden.  Or all of you.  I have news to deliver of a fallen Warden.”  After the Awakened had taken the body of Berg beneath Honnleath, she had claimed his badge and sword.  The rest...had been disposed of.  Red lyrium was nothing to take lightly.  As last time, she leaned against her staff, ignoring how the Wardens towered over her.  This time, she suppressed the rage.  There was no value, and she couldn’t afford for it to leak.  She pulled at the mantle of cold calculation from Kinloch, and eld close to her own and Alistair’s sparkling humor.

“Are you going to answer our questions now, little mage?”  The First Warden spoke, the others gathered around.  She listened carefully to the song beneath her feet, to the whispers of the Tainted connection singing around her, as carefully as she watched the Wardens so suspicious before her.

“Perhaps.  But I am no longer a Warden, you say, so am no longer bound to obedience.”

Another Senior Warden spoke.  “And as a non-Warden, you also have nothing to protect you.”

Alissa waved her hand.  “We all know that’s not true.  You remember my last visit.  I have  _ knowledge _ because you don’t have the right questions to ask.”  She shook her head.  “First things first.”  Slowly, she pulled the sword from her pack, and the badge from her belt.  “Berg.  I return his badge to his Order.”

Whispers of unease from behind her.  It was enough that a younger voice spoke out.  “Berg?  What was he doing in Ferelden?”

The unease could be valuable, so long as she kept it under control.  “You didn’t know?”  She raised an eyebrow, still watching the First Warden.  “He believed he was there on your orders.”  The First Warden kept his face still...but the same unease spread from him, spilling into the rest of the Wardens, soft as silk.  “He was corrupted somehow by red lyrium.  Do you know it?”

No, they didn’t.  It wasn’t a Darkspawn.

She sighed.  “Something discovered in Kirkwall.  Part of how Corypheus tried to turn the Templars, and the Venatori.  And possibly the Wardens – though that could have been the Blight itself.  Lyrium is blue.  Red lyrium is Blighted.”

Gasps.  Disbelief.  “Lyrium isn’t alive, foolish mage.”

Long practice kept her from rolling her eyes - she’d heard that tone about...almost everything she’d done with magic since she was twelve.  “I’ve seen it myself.  Do you have a healer?  A spirit healer?”

One of the mages shifted.  “I am.”  His voice was high, but steady.

“What spirit?”  The First Warden wasn’t happy she was ignoring him - but the other Wardens were captivated.  Or captive...Alissa took a breath and tried to still her emotions.

“Determination.”

Hm.  Yes, that would probably be enough.  Better if he’d bonded to Curiosity or Learning, even another Wonder, but Determination was not Certainty.  She nodded back.  “Here.  You two look at it.”  She tossed a box his way.  “Be careful - it can root even in one of us.  You’ll need to work with your spirit and listen to the Taint inside you...it resonates with anything else Tainted.”

It took a long moment where he looked down and she worried his mind had been too warped by whatever Circle he’d come from to use his gifts properly.  Luckily, he gasped.  “It is!  I don’t know how...I thought it was just a rock…”

She shrugged.  “It grows.  It can be Blighted.”  She wasn’t about to mention the rest.  “We don’t understand it.”

“Lies.”  A whisper, just after the Song beneath her shifted sharp.  She felt the Wardens shifting, and whispered calm, whispered doubt.  She had to be so careful to whisper without the Taint showing against her skin...or the chance of catching the attention of a possibly-attentive Warden.

“From your own mage?  Nugshit.  Come now, I’m not that powerful, nor a blood mage.  His spirit would have spotted anything even if your other mages didn’t.”  She sighed.  “Did you send Berg to Honnleath?”

“No.”

Alissa cocked her head, but he seemed to be telling the truth.   _ Sod it all.  Worse than I thought.   _ “He thought you had.”

“To do what?”

She took a breath, pushed her awareness as far and deep as it would go without drawing too much.  “To assassinate the Divine.”

Chaos.  Shouting.  Shock.  But underneath her, anger seeped into the melody that surrounded her.  “How dare you accuse him of this!”

She raised her voice, its sharpness piercing through.  “I dare nothing!  You older Wardens - you know.  You cannot lie to someone else with the Taint.  Senior Wardens can see through.  He attempted to kill the Divine.  He poisoned retired Templars in Honnleath with red lyrium to make them susceptible to something else with the Taint.  There aren’t that many options.”

The Senior Warden’s eyes popped open.  So did two Constables and another trio that looked close to their Calling.

“I do not lie to you.  There’s no value.  If you didn’t send him, who did?”  How she’d gotten away with her earlier lies was better not thought about, she realized.  After a moment she waved her hand.  “Enough.  I’ll tell you, though I don’t know how the red lyrium got in him, but probably the same source.”  Here was the moment.  “I told you last time, Corypheus was just one of the Seven.  You know what he was capable of doing to Wardens better than I.”  She fought her rage over that again.  Secrets and lies.  She needed to stay calm.  “There are more.  I ran into one other.  And now, coming here, I’ve heard a third.”  Beneath all of them, the Song screamed in rage, and mutters sprang out.

The Senior Wardens remained silent.

“Why did you torture Alistair?”  She tightened her grip on the corruption, her veins darkening slightly as she met the eyes of the First Warden.

He resisted only a moment.  “Because he was disobedient.”

“Why did you consider the same for me?”

“Because you are disobedient.”

“What do you demand of your Wardens?”  Alissa shivered even as she fought to hide it.  If he realized - if  _ any  _ of them realized what she was doing...she’d be dead.

“Obedience to the Order.  Unquestioning, unhesitating.”

Alissa shook her head, called on Wonder’s help, slid compassion and wondering into the Wardens’ song.  “That is not what our oath entails.  To fight the Blight, you need warriors willing to risk all, but thinking ones.  What you just described are slaves.”  She swallowed, and pushed.  “The Darkspawn you found so long ago, deep beneath the Surface...Corypheus, the Conductor.  And here, where you have suffered the most from the Fourth Blight, the one that has never seemed to truly end despite the death of Andoral…”

Chaos.  But at least there were some murmurs of doubt.  She’d tossed the dice, and wondered where they would land.   _ Stone, thank you.   _ One of them was clever enough to follow the connections she didn’t  _ quite  _ lay out in words.  “You say there is one of these things beneath us?”

She listened and threw caution to the wind.  It rarely suited her since she’d left Kinloch.  “I wondered.”  She dropped her voice, spoke out loud, through the song...pushed her Song to drown out the one below, for at least a moment.  “Calm yourself.  Listen to your blood, to the whispers, to the Taint around you, and reach down.  Can you hear the song?  The Old Gods sleep in their prisons, but you can hear something else.  Dark, old...angry at your disobedience.” Alissa’s sharp voice slid to a whisper.  “Listen deep.  Mages can hear more easily, but any can learn if they lean into the corruption.”  A few listened.  Not the First Warden who watched, but the healing mage.  The Senior Wardens darkened and she felt others, stillness spreading through the connection she was barely tied to.  As they did, she pulled back the muffling effect of her own singing through the Taint.

She should have suspected - it was one of the mages, reeking of blood, who reacted first.  He pulled back, shock and horror through every line of him.  “Maker preserve us!”  He looked at Alissa’s tiny, buxom form.  “Did you do this?”

The Song beneath then burst forth a sharp note of baffled rage before slipping into soothing, seductive strains again.  But this time...there was doubt within the Wardens, sliding along the corruption with the faint immunity the ritual granted them.  Unfortunately, it was immunity to the Old Gods but not necessarily to their servants.

She laughed.  Of all the things... _ why  _ would she want to wake another Magister?  The two were bad enough, even if the Architect’s knowledge had been useful.  He hadn’t known what he was.  

“No.”  She felt the greasy tendrils of his magic slip into her mind, trying to force truth, as he drew a blade across his hand.  She allowed it - she  _ was  _ speaking truth - for long enough, then slapped him back out.  “Courtesy, Brother.”  She kept her voice amused.  No matter how things looked, she played as dangerous a game as she ever had at Kinloch or with Avernus.

“You are no Sister.  No Warden.”  Another voice from behind her, cold and angry.  “You were thrown out.  Do not call us Brothers.”

Alissa laughed.  “I took the Oath.  ‘Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant.’  I drank.”  She pulled her own dagger.  “And while I have not found death, I  _ have _ sacrificed.”  She drew it across her wrist, letting her corrupted blood pour out slow and dark.  The scent of the Blight drifted through the room as she met the gaze of the First Warden.  “I met one of the Seven after the Blight.  Then, as with Corypheus, I was not free of the Song.  The influence whispered into my mind.  But I have studied, and learned.”  She clenched her fist, and a glow enveloped it as she healed the wound, the only sign being the blackened pool at her feet.  “You know what this means, how little I may have left.  The Wardens of the South are free from the risks of the Seven, but it took my sacrifice to do so.  And yes, they are still Wardens.  We are and remain so, whether Weisshaupt recognizes us.”

She saw the confusion and uncertainty in the First Warden’s eyes, quickly masked.  “I...must think.  Consult.”  He gestured, and a young Warden, barely Tainted, came forward.  “Take her to a room where she can rest.”  His grey eyes stayed focused on her.  “We will speak later, Warden-Commander.  Not all sacrifices are for the good of the Order.”

She bowed her head, accepting his authority as he had named her Warden again.  At least for now.  “Of course.  Call on me as you need.  But as those who resisted Corypheus’ Calling did, question everything.  Assumptions.  Ways of thought.  Test it all against our oaths.  The Seven are old and dangerous.  Look at what Corypheus did, even though he had spent a millennium trapped in sleep.”


	6. Tracing Corruption

Her escort was courteous enough not to lock the door behind her.  She was courteous enough to ignore the ‘guard’ in the hall.  The room was small and stark - but it still had a large window overlooking the courtyard.  So.  Not a prisoner but not quite a guest.  Alissa shrugged to herself and sat down at the small table to eat the bread and slices of ham that had arrived before her.  Listening let her feel whispers of the Awakened at the edge of her awareness.  For now, good enough.  Blinking the Taint-film from her eyes, Alissa nodded.  She curled up with a book on the Second Blight until the sunset, then braided a light barrier across the inside of the door, laid down and slept.

This set the pattern for the next three days: courtesy, meals, and silence.  She remembered that from Kinloch and appreciated the solid door.  Each morning she calmed the rustles of the Awakened, and continued waiting.  The knowledge she’d tossed out would take time to ponder.  The longer she was at least partially a guest, the better.

**

Alissa pulled herself out of meditation when she felt her barrier at the door bend around a person.  It was one of the Senior Wardens.  She used her staff and stood.  “Sera.”

“Warden-Commander.”  The words were short and curt.  “Come with me.  Please.”  She was clearly unconvinced, but willing to follow the First Warden, at least this far.  Unconvinced of what, Alissa could not tell.

The mage slipped her boots back on and nodded, following the Senior Warden through the labyrinth of Weisshaupt to the First Warden’s...war room, or something like it.  As always, she leaned on her staff as she stood, its curves towering over her.  This time, the First Warden and his seniors all sat, but without the sense of an interrogation.

“Will you tell us truth?”  His voice was tired, but otherwise neutral.  Like his face, it disclosed nothing - still better than the suspicion she’d faced more than a year ago, when she came to rescue Alistair.

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

Alissa pondered, her head to one side.  “Probably not.”  The First Warden’s brows lowered.  “Some of it is not my truth to share.  What I can of the Seven, of course.  What I can of the Taint...it depends.  Some is dangerous to my Wardens if yours are not free from risk of their influence.  My Oath requires me to protect the Wardens, as you know.  Even from ourselves.”

The Senior Warden who escorted her growled, while another clearly felt this was all he needed to condemn her.  The First Warden, though, considered her, as did the other two Senior Wardens in the room.  Alissa let her inner self drift into the corruption, the song of connection between the Weisshaupt Wardens, following the faint thread of melody she hadn’t snapped.  It grew easier each time she tried - required less attention, less effort.  Considering...and the melody still harmonized with the Song she feared, but less so.  “Then I must insist you allow Frauline to watch your mind to confirm the truth of what you say.”

She considered in turn.  “So long as that’s all she does.  There is a reason I have no truck with blood magic, and it has nothing to do with the strictures of the Chantry.  Everyone deserves control of their own mind, privacy of their own thoughts.”  She still remembered the tortured Cullen, begging her to kill everyone after what he’d suffered, shaking from nightmares, whispers and lyrium withdrawal, and her voice got hard.  “No one deserves to lose themselves.”

The two exchanged a long glance before the First Warden nodded.  “That is fair enough, though I do not like conditions to my requests.”  His voice had shifted from it’s tired false briskness to his own brand of hard.  Well, she hadn’t pushed  _ that  _ hard.

Alissa watched the Senior Warden casually drag her forearm across a spike in her armor - clearly there for that reason - and felt the greasy sensation of another in her mind again.  Yuck.  The Senior Warden nodded.

“You said you met the Architect, Second among the Seven.  When?”

“Shortly after the Blight, near Vigil’s Keep.  He was...involved with the Darkspawn resurgence.  I believe he was the Architect based on what I now know of Corypheus.  Similar appearance, intelligent, talking.  He said he was simply an intelligent Darkspawn.  I doubted that, but he offered an alliance against a mad Broodmother.  At the time, the alliance seemed reasonable.”

“Truth, but there is more.”  The woman’s accent was thick, but understandable.

“Tell me the rest.”

Alissa took a breath, still drifting between the Taint and the rest.  “I won’t tell you all of it.  But the reason I think he was the Architect?  Because I found out, too late to confront him, that he was involved with the rise of Urthemiel.  Apparently accidental, believe that if you will.  The connection seemed straightforward.”

“Apparently?”

A sigh.  “First Warden, what can I say?  Unlike the Wardens around Corypheus, I remember, but there are still breaks.”  Her eyes narrowed.  “As I said, control of one’s mind is something I hold sacred.  One of the few things I still do.  If that rotting bastard sidestepped my ability to think, trust me I wouldn’t tolerate that.”  Her voice was even sharper than usual with anger.

A huff from one of the Senior Wardens harmonized with a scoff from another, who spoke.  “You want us to believe you spoke with one of the Seven, and he was unknowing?  And you did nothing after you discovered the cause of the Fifth so-called Blight?”

“Do you seriously doubt that it was Urthemiel?  Even here, you had to have heard his song, saw him in your dreams.”  She rolled her eyes.  “And yes.  Based on what little Hawke passed on before her death, Corypheus was able to twist the minds of Wardens around him through the Taint.   She reported having heard from poor Larius.  Shape them, their perceptions, their...comfort with different thoughts.  Whispers, rather than the shouts of the Old Gods.”  A shrug.  “If one did, why not another?  Nothing else made sense.”

“Ah, the Archdemon.  And yet no Warden died to destroy him.  Tell me that story.”

“No.”  That was one secret she  _ refused  _ to share, banishing even the thought of the people involved.

The shout from his left surprised the First Warden.  “Lies!  She has given herself to demons, the rumors from Denerim must be true!”

Alissa tipped her head back and laughed.  “You must be an idiot or have no knowledge of Ferelden since the Blight to say that.  Of course the Mad Queen is furious at me.  You didn’t notice the only rumors were from Denerim itself?  None from Amaranthine, who saw me for a decade?”  While there was still laughter in her eyes, there was also a hard glint as she looked at the Wardens around her, as her voice quieted with warning, and bitter humor.  “Besides, you all know the truth.  If they knew what we truly were they’d call all of us malificar, possessed.  There’s a reason the Order protects the secret of the Joining and of the Calling.”

He surged up, halted only by a brief movement of the First Warden’s hand.  “But she!”

“Enough.  She has yet to lie to us, right, Frauline?”

“Avoided answers, but no lies. I can see no further without permission or violation.”

The First Warden stroked his beard, and sat back with a sigh.  “Why do you feel the South is safe from the Seven?”

Finally.  Alissa found the end of her braid in her free hand and brushed it against her chin.  “Wondering.  Study.  Experiments.  I’d found and kept notes from Soldier’s Peak - Avernus and Dryden had conducted experiments there.”  Best not to mention Avernus had still been alive until just recently.  “I’d found and kept notes from the Architect’s lair.  Hawke passed me the few notes she’d kept from Corypheus’ prison.  And I’m bonded to Wonder itself.”  She shrugged.  “Any knowledge can be useful, with just a little care.  I’ve never been bound to the concept of schools of magic, and that has...meant more freedom in how I cast.  It also means I’m more willing to look beyond the ‘impossible’ to see what can really be done.”  She let lashes veil her hazel eyes, hide the black ring that hadn’t faded.  “Plus the journey I made West, and what I learned there.  I...experimented myself.  I’d been learning about the Taint since I discovered the mess at Vigil’s Keep, so...so once I knew about the Seven still existing, the way they could affect us, it was only logical to listen for other songs.”

Frauline spoke again, the fingers in Alissa’s mind tightening.  “You do magic with the Taint?”  Horror, but also interest.  Of course.  She already worked in blood.

“Not exactly?  The more you work with it, the further it spreads.  Though we all use the Taint, it’s a matter of degree.  Where do you think our endurance comes from, our strength?  But just listening, and it slips past that.”

His cold, tired voice cut through the starting discussion, and Alissa dropped her braid.  “How?”

Alissa chewed her lip, and spoke slowly.  “First Warden.  I...need to act.  To...muffle things for a moment.”  She waited, surprised when she received a faint nod.   _ Thank the Stone.  The doubt has gone far enough, perhaps.  No Warden would make it to First without strength of will.  Which could be good or bad.   _ She felt inside, felt the shape of the Warden melody against the subtly dissonant harmonies of the Song below.  Gradually she slipped her own Song down the thin chain between her and the Wardens, braiding it into theirs; it made a barrier, a shelter from the Song - and mind, she suspected.  Her veins darkened, but she hoped it was subtle enough to pass almost unnoticed.  Success - she saw the Wardens’ faces change.  “It’s much like listening for Darkspawn or recognizing another Warden.  I can hear a Song beneath; one that’s old and dark, through the Taint.  One that you may have just heard vanish, or felt something change, I don’t know.  We know Corypheus had some ability to influence the thoughts of the Wardens around him - does that not also mean he could hear them?  Would you risk that knowledge getting to what lies below?  Can we dare risk that?”

After a long moment, the First Warden spoke again.  “Sit, Warden-Commander.”

“You can’t possibly mean to  _ listen  _ to her!  She’s…”

_ “Enough,  _ Senior Warden.”  A skin of anger showed on the First Warden’s face, and uneasiness on Frauline’s.  The other three, Alissa could not see well enough.

It was enough for her to admit her own uneasiness.  “First Warden, is the blood magic really necessary at this point?”

“No.  Is your use of the Taint?”

She felt the greasy whispers carefully withdraw, and breathed easier.  “I...maybe?  You felt the difference, or seemed to.  As it is, I think my...magic can protect you.  After?  I don’t know.  Will your dreams tell it the truth?  I don’t know.”

A fourth voice sounded.  Rivaini, likely.  “What is it?”

Alissa sighed.  “I guess, but I don’t know.  What could produce such a powerful echo in the Taint without being an Old God, something we’re immune to until much later?”  She looked around at the other Senior Wardens, and spotted the one who had spoken against her, his face still glowering...and a faint sword still showing on his armor.

“What you did in the South - can you do that here?”  The First Warden carefully avoided what it was.

A shudder, remembering how close she’d been to being subsumed.  “I doubt it.  I lack the ingredients, and...well.”  And she may already be too Tainted to pull off the same trick again.  But that, she’d hid from even Alistair.  Whether the Awakened knew was an open question - they heard so much more.  They said nothing, if they knew.  “I was not working against anything so close, or so…”  she thought, teasing apart her hairs with her tongue, “so...active.  Aware, awake?  I don’t know.  But it was responding to what it felt through the Taint, to the Warden-mind.”  She gradually slipped up underneath the Templar, feeling the Taint with Wonder in him.  This one…he was different.  Active, if not quite aware.

Frauline questioned.  “Warden-mind?”

Quick calculation as she stroked her braid.  “Yes.  You’ve seen the horrors that are broodmothers, yes?  The Darkspawn are like insects, almost, with their queens.  It’s the Taint that connects them all.  How else could they ambush, how else could an Archdemon talk to them?  And we also carry the Taint.  As best I can tell, that’s what we listen to when we detect them.  The braided songs, or different hive minds.  Through the Taint.”

The First Warden was suspicious again.  “Why do you share this now when in two years, Alistair told us nothing?”

Her anger flared through her Song, and they felt it.  She pulled back into control, watching her hand lighten from shadows under the skin.  “First, why would you think Alistair, a Templar trainee, would understand how to listen to the Taint, decipher research and magic, use those techniques _ and  _ piece together meaning?  It took Wonder and I years.  Second, the torture.  If you questioned me as you did him, you would have gotten fewer answers.”

The Templar Warden sniffed.  “And what could you have done?”

She looked at him through her black-rimmed eyes, the taint still showing her veins shadowed against her skin.  “You don’t want to know.”

“And if I do?  If I say it is necessary?”

Alissa flicked a brief smile at his challenge.  “Then you’ll just have to live with disappointment.  A Warden-Commander outranks a Senior Warden, even here at Weisshaupt.  And Templars do not rule mages in the Order.”  She turned away from the man, a deliberate snub, to face the First Warden directly.  “There are other things I have to speak with you regarding…recent history.  Privately.”

“I trust my Senior Wardens.”

She worked to keep her voice respectful.  “That’s fine, but I don’t.”  She felt the surge inside the Taint...oh, that didn’t make the Templar happy.  Oddly enough, Frauline the blood mage seemed understanding.  The other two were possibly insulted, but nothing significant.  At least, not with her muffling the Song below...something she would have to stop soon.  It was draining.

“I see.”  The First Warden’s voice was still deep, still cold.  “We will speak, later.”

Alissa nodded.  “I must let go my hold on the Songs, soon.  First Warden…”  she considered, then changed what she was about to say.  “I await your word.”


	7. Dreams of Chains

The dreams came.  She’d expected it after how far she’d drifted into the Tainted Songs...it would have tasted her presence as she could recognize its.  The swirling mists formed into pillars, towering spires, tiled patterns hypnotic along the floor.  Chains.  Everywhere, chains.  It would be impressive if it wasn’t so overdone.

_ “It has been some time, my brother.  I had not expected you, even as changed as you are.”  The voice was sibilant, seductive, demanding.  It assumed the obedience of the world around it, unlike Corypheus’ more cultured tones. _

_ It could not see her - nor she, it.  A moment to debate, but she answered.  “No brother, even through the centuries.  Surely things have not changed that much.” _

_ It moved into view - tall, so tall, and gaunt, with lyrium sullenly gleaming from its face, arms, even its chest.  This one wore a hooded robe, the shapes and faint red glow all that could identify it.  “Lies?  To me?”  Rage.  “How dare you.  I have enslaved others before - and when I am done, you will beg for the lash.” _

_ “Perhaps I have forgotten.”  Her voice was cool.  “Who am I, in your eyes?” _

_ “Submit, brother.  Madness to do otherwise - madness to do so.  A coin flip, yes?  Murder, or kneel?  Which will you choose?” _

_ Alissa ignored the faint chill she felt at those words.  “There is always a loop somewhere.  I have yet to submit to anything.  You will not be the first to fail.” _

_ It howled, and she got a glimpse underneath the cowl.  Sunken, rotting flesh, keys around its neck.   _ “Fool!   _ You dare to challenge me?  You claim surety of your god, when Zazikal is risen and dead?   What are you, without your god?” _

She stopped before she could start muttering prayers to an uncaring Maker or to the Stone below.  She would not dare pray to anything in the depths, for fear this one could hear her.   _ “Most of the gods are dead.  Yours as well.”  Now, she let her form coalesce, staff in hand and hooded as well.  “And I am what you have heard, with no god’s support.  You called me brother, but I am not.  Why?” _

_ It looked at her, eyes hidden in shadow as it raised a taloned, distorted finger to its chin.  “You - you have the taste of one of us, but you run lighter.  You lack the weight of centuries.  How could this be?” _

For the first time, she wondered if her Awakened were right to warn her from this place.  But doubt was too late, so she banished it.  They needed the Wardens, which meant she needed to free them - and that meant knowing what held them bound.

_ She did not answer - no, this one could do too much with truth, and she didn’t know what.  So instead she answered in the same tone of innocence that drove the Mad Queen to chew on her throne.  “Magic?” _

_ It howled again, weight smashing down on her. _

_ Alissa tossed her hand, and the weight vanished in the glare of her certainty.  Certainty in dream-magic she’d never attempted before, but surely was no different than any other.  A twist, and the shimmer around her form was gone.  “Then don’t ask questions I would be a fool to answer.” _

_ It hissed.  “I devoured you once before.  I will do so again.  You are too far from the rising of your dead god to resist.” _

_ “We shall see.  After all, yours is dead by the very hands you are attempting to claim, too late to do any good.  Appraiser.” _

**

Alissa tossed back the hair that escaped from her braid, fighting to unwind herself from the knotted sheets.  A gasping few breaths at the window – cold and harsh.  Real.  The Songs faded into the back of her mind, an ever-present conversation she couldn’t quite make out.

“Stone take it.  Blighted, nughumping sunstroked disaster!  Sod it all, take everything, all of this crap to the Abyss!  I don’t want to deal with this!”  After a few minutes, she’d settled enough to reach out to the Awakened – they had stirred but were used to the anger, if not the fear.   _ Hush,  _ she whispered along the thread of connection.   _ Not yet.  _

Not yet.  But now that she was here she had no choice.  The dream had ended, but she was sure.  The Appraiser of Slaves, High Priest to Andoral.  “If it was easy, it wouldn’t have become my problem.”  Alistair’s humor didn’t cheer her up this morning, though a blessing he was so far away.  Out of range, out of the threat – but he’d never forgive her if she didn’t find a way to come home.  Oh, and in one piece.   _ Easy as walking into the Deep Roads and whistling up a Genlock, right, m’dear?   _ She snorted, and started pulling apart her braid to tidy it up.

_ So, what to do now?   _ When in doubt, information.  There was so little about the Seven, but some…and if you wanted to know about the Blights, there was probably no better place to be.   _ I wonder. _

The guard stared as she opened her door for the first time unbidden.  “Warden-Commander?”

Alissa choked down a reaction to his confused tension.   _ What would you do if I did try to leave?  No, we’ll keep playing the game.    _ “Warden.  Good to have you here.  I’m looking for reading material - research.  Anything on where the Blights began, and the year or so leading up to them, and the year or so around when they ended.  Oh, and a map.  With the locations of the last two prisons marked.”

The young Warden stared.

Alissa chewed her braid.  “Actually, one of your historians, and a stack of paper…and some ink, probably, would also help.  Almost forgot!  I also need everything you have on the Seven; records, legends or otherwise.”  She smiled brightly.  “My thanks!”  When she closed the door, she fell to the ground, laughing silently.  Half of it was at the poor guard, and the other half the tension and fear sparked by the dream that wasn’t.   _ The Appraiser.  Maker help us all, they’re still awake. _

**

A pounding on the door interrupted her concentration; she held onto her work, but just.  “Come in?  Unless you are here to kill me.  Then you need to make an appointment.”

Two pressed through the cobweb of a barrier she’d left at the door.  Just enough to get attention, not enough for any but a mage to notice.  An  _ alert  _ mage - she didn’t braid barriers the way mages were ‘supposed’ to.  “You asked for historians and a great deal of information, Warden-Commander.”  The rich, Rivaini accent fell from her lips.  “Though you may want to greet the First…what is  _ that?” _

Alissa glanced over her shoulder.  “Oh!  First Warden.”  She stood and bowed, re-won control of her spell, and drifted into the Taint to muffle them from the Songs below.  A fleeting wish she still used lyrium darted through her, but was ruthlessly suppressed.  Not with what had happened to her body.  Not with what she’d seen in her dreams, or what Safeyya had told her of Corypheus.  She bit her lip, worried on her braid, but…balanced.  She blew out a breath.  “Forgive my inattention.”

He raised an eyebrow.  “As the Senior Warden said, you asked for some very specific information.  Dangerous information.”

“Of course I did.  If there is one of the Seven alert and aware, I need it to understand patterns.  There are always patterns in magic and in ritual.”  Less so for her magic, but she was different.  Patterns were a starting point, but they made you predictable.  Distractions.  She hauled her mind back onto what she had in front of her: muffling the Song, the spell in the center of her room, and now her guests.  “If I can find the pattern, I can find the Magister.”   _ I think. _

“And we cannot?”  The Senior Warden’s voice was sharp and challenging – but she did not feel offended within the Song.  More curious.

Alissa shrugged.  “I don’t know, Sister.  Given what Corypheus was able to do to Wardens who were too near for too long, I wouldn’t rely on it.  Would you?”

She ignored Alissa’s answer – all the answer the mage needed – and gestured back at the glowing maze hovering above the floor.  “What  _ is  _ this?”

‘A spell’ would not get a positive reaction.  Especially when neither Warden was hostile at the moment.  “A map.  Almost, anyway.”  They just looked at her.  As the day had progressed, the woven light had grown more complex: she’d had to raise it four times, and shrink it twice.  Even still, the top was above her head.  She pointed with her staff.  “Weisshaupt, up at the top.  The beads are where I can sense Darkspawn…or the Taint, at least.  You know that the Deep Roads hold the Taint in the lichen and small animals, I assume?  One of the things we found in the Shaperate Memories.  If you start plotting the points of Taint…”

“You get a map.  Clever.”  The First Warden’s voice was dry.  “Where did this idea come from?”

The question sparked a smile.  “I’d love to say I thought of it, but it was one of my Wardens.  He’s no mage, but spent time digging wells – among other things – while he was still in Antiva.  As he learned about how more senior Wardens could sense the Taint, he mentioned how he found pools of water below ground.  The small animals, he said, built tunnels to get there.  He used sound.  I use the Songs.”

“He must be a strong right hand for you at Vigil’s Keep.”

Alissa’s face tightened.  “He’s not.  He was one of those we lost at Adamant to Corypheus.  He argued and was used as a blood sacrifice.  One of those whose blood became part of the tie from the mages to the Magister.”  Where had she been, a mage who could have recognized the Tainted Song and fought against it?  Out bloody West, too far away for her people’s needs.  But the Cure.   _ It’s past.  It’s past, and nothing can be done to bring him back, or any of the others lost.  All I can do is try kill this one – really kill it – and start hunting the rest.  They’re more dangerous than the Old Gods, because they think like we do. _

Oh, and hate.  But the most dangerous did more than just hate.  They made you understand them.  She remembered the dream conversations with Corypheus, and she had seen the transcripts of what Safeyya had heard from him.   _ Her  _ words, some of them. His desperate need for there to be something  _ more,  _ but her ideas.  That, she shared with no one.

The Senior Warden gave her a nod.  “I am your historian.  Sister.  I’ll have the records and maps brought.”

**

“You don’t seem mad about what happened to your Warden.”

Alissa’s rage flared through her spell before she yanked her own leash.  The Senior Warden – Besheva – covered her eyes.

“Ah.”

“You weren’t involved in that, were you?”  She fought hard to keep the snarl from her voice and the Taint, but she and Wonder remembered what they had healed as well as the scars of what they couldn’t.

Besheva looked past the half-open books and flurry of notes scattered around the floor.  “The questioning, of course.  We needed the information.  Even the drugs, when we thought he was simply being an ass.”  Alissa managed a snort at that one – he swore he’d gotten over that.  “But…no, not the rest.  The Senior Warden you killed was the one to suggest harsher measures.  I went on a long recruiting stint when I realized I would not be able to stop it.  I could not be here.”

“But you did not speak against it.”

Besheva’s eyes grew dark.  “Do not sit and judge me.  You threw away our assistance.  You did not answer letters.  And even now you refuse to answer our questions.  Somehow, you ended a Blight without losing a Warden to the Archdemon’s soul, you hoard that information, and then have the gall to judge our commitment to an Order we served for a decade before you stumbled into it?  You killed Urthemiel and ended a Blight.  We honor that – but we are used to dead heroes, not ones that meddle in politics to the Order’s detriment.  And certainly not ones who sass their superiors.”

“Alistair is Senior Warden - and my husband.”  Besheva paled, ever so slightly.  “As to politics, nugshit.  Your own First Warden is said to be so involved in Hossberg that he’s ignored the Darkspawn.  That’s why the Blight never ended.  Having met him, I think that’s also nugshit.  But he had no problem with my being named Arlessa.  Even sent us a treasurer and spy.  He had no problem with my crowning a Dwarven king, or with my deciding the ruler of Ferelden.  Poorly, that, but I was young.  Wardens stay out of politics like nobles stay out of their maidservants.”

The two women stared at each other.

_ I can’t believe I just said that. _

Finally, Besheva spoke.  “I can’t ask for peace, but…truce.  Anything against the Darkspawn.”

Alissa nodded.   _ Forgive me, Alistair.   _ “Truce.”  She took a deep breath and turned back to their work.  “So, about Toth…”

**

She’d left the notes out of order – it wasn’t like she really needed them much, anyhow.  Well, the map was useful, but just writing the notes was almost enough for her.   _ See, Morrigan, there are some advantages to not being a planner.  I can keep everything in my head.   _ Gods rising…gods falling.  The foundation of the Order and discovering the terrible sacrifice of the Joining was only the beginning.  The Taint had also been there from the beginning, destroying it all; gradually eating it from within.  Alissa had  _ seen  _ a land with no Blight.  She knew what the Taint had caused, and knew that if it was the Maker’s temper tantrum, he at least didn’t intend to destroy everything.  Just her part of it.   _ Sod that. _

**

_ “Submit.”  The word flowed through mist and whispers, the Song tightening around her throat. _

_ She had been unprepared for the subtlety, as magic twined with corruption sank barbs into her soul.  But she was not a mage for naught.  Nor Warden-Commander, Warden-Mother.  Alissa sank into her blood, searching for the drops that were from the Archdemon…and the others, from the dragon.  Combining that with a braid of what lesser idiots thought of as entropy and spirit would have some effect, even before the ‘forbidden’ magic that made no sense to her in the physical world… With a twist that left pieces of herself behind, she slipped from the barbs, a spiked, armored throat no longer vulnerable to the whip of pain that encircled it. _

_ She didn’t dare wait long to respond.  “Almost clever, Appraiser,” she taunted, ignoring creeping terror and pain, instead pulling on the hard-edged woman she’d had to become as well as the innocent sweetness Alistair believed in.  “Too bad you’re a millennia out of touch.” _

_ The chain coming out of the darkness caught on the staff suddenly in her taloned hand, then shattered.  “You DARE!” _

_ One last chance.  “Leave.  Vanish into the depths, take your leash with you.  Abandon those you’ve tried to ensnare.” _

_ “You are…threatening me?  You, an upstart CHILD that doesn’t understand?”  Now the shadow formed within the mist. _

_ It was an interesting question.  She pondered the answer.  “No.  I don’t threaten.” _

_ The emotion, rage and possession, thundered through the silence.  “These Wardens are mine.” _

_ “They are their own.” _

_ A howl of laughter beat at her mind and wings.  “You understand NOTHING.  You think I cannot hear YOUR Song, sense the souls lined up for your sacrifice?  At least I have never lied to myself.”  The voice turned caressing again.  “Submit.  Free yourself from the agony of wrong decisions.”  _


	8. A Disease is Worth a Cure

Alissa shook her head.  She needed – needed trust.  So now she found herself speaking to the First Warden and the spirit healers of Weisshaupt.

“I found a Cure.”

They stared.  “A..Cure.”  The First Warden blinked.  “A cure for what?”

“What do you think?  A Cure.  The Cure.  From the Taint.”

_ “NO!”   _ One of the Healers stood up.  “It is magic and sin, not some…disease.  This isn’t something we can do or should do.  Wardens are needed.  Always.  The Blight…”  He shook his head.  “There has only been one instance..”  The words were choked off by the glares from the others.

_ One instance.  Interesting.   _ “It  _ is  _ magic.  It’s not sin.  A magical…disease.  Fine, it’s more than that, but there’s a reason we’re spirit healers.  I wondered.  Then I researched – and found a lead.”  Well, Morrigan had researched.   _ She’d  _ experimented.  “There’s a way.  So, I have a Cure.  Probably.”  Honesty made her tart voice throw that in at the end.

“And if you don’t?”

She shrugged.  “Then, First Warden, it’s probably agonizing and certainly fatal.”

_ That  _ got more stares.

“It’s probably agonizing either way – it’s a matter of…well, of magic and dragons and rebuilding the body  _ without  _ Taint.  It may be necessary, though, to deal with the Magister.”  The idea had just come to her.  Alissa remembered holding something, once.  A cage for a soul.  Maybe.  “Is there one Warden here willing to take the chance, who Joined with the blood of Andoral?” Her Song had muffled beneath them again, and her Awakened were closer.  Almost too close, but with the Magister’s Song, the Wardens were less perceptive.  The Awakened also didn’t  _ feel  _ quite like Darkspawn.  

The First Warden’s old, hooded eyes landed on her, but her shoulders didn’t react.  She was used to the weight of Warden-Commander, Arlessa, and Inconveniently Alive Hero.

“There will be.”

**

There was one – and thankfully, one that Joined since the last Blight.  From what she pieced together, this would be easier with a younger Warden – the body better remembered being unTainted.  Well, it should.

The other two spirit healers were watching – as was a blood mage.  Alissa hated that, but in this case it could be useful.  “What this is.  It’s not blood magic,” she repeated to all of them, the First Warden, the young woman in the center, and three other mages.  “It’s magic that uses blood.  But not magic  _ of  _ blood, no more than healing is.  More, but…well, you’ll see.”  Maybe.  Well, they’d see.  Whether they’d understand - well.  Hopefully.

She and the other healers looked at each other before swallowing their potions, bright and blue.  The false strength of the lyrium swum through her with a shock as every sense sharpened.  She hadn’t used the stuff since the Blight.  A last pass of her hand over the chalice, and Wonder agreed.

With a nod, the woman drank the concoction, choking down thick and bitter-copper harshness without expression.

The next step – the barrier.  Alissa wove it carefully, using the lyrium and not her own mana.  Anything to keep it pure as she wrapped it under the woman as she sank to her knees and lapped it up around her.  Then, the Healing started, if it could be called  _ healing. _

Alissa drove into the Taint, finding the connection to the other healers and the woman in front of her, her skin shadowing.  The woman wept Taint.  It poured down her chin as she bit through her lip.  Alissa and Wonder were  _ inside,  _ coming up through the Song, through the corruption that connected them, and pushed it out before them.  She stayed near the heart, purifying the blood as it came through while Wonder powdered and remade the woman’s bones.  The other healers watched, and then Determination and Compassion joined Wonder, keeping the woman’s heart beating, her lungs moving.   _ That  _ was an unexpected help.  The spirits could be trusted to not be the idiots her fellow mages could become.

The others let her move into the hardest part – the mind.  Even Wonder could not help here as she forced delicate nets of magic into the woman’s thoughts and feelings; this was the complexity a spirit simply could not understand.  Unlike the others,  _ she  _ lived within the Taint and within the magics most thought were impossible, a fine-threaded barrier gradually sieving out corruption and leaving faintly bloody wholeness behind.

_ Freedom from the chains we took all unknowing, only aware the alternative was worse. _

**_‘FREEDOM…’_ **

_ The whisper almost tore her concentration, thrumming up from deep within her bones.   _ Later.  Whatever  _ that  _ was, it would have to wait.

Once the last of the Taint was pooled underneath the whimpering heap, Alissa closed the barrier around it, carefully peeling it along the woman’s skin to collect every bit.

“What?”

The tiny woman ignored the confused word with the ease of long practice.  None of  _ her  _ mages understood her either – but this was…something.  Something that could be important…and an edge couldn’t hurt, for the Appraiser.  No, she needed every edge against one of the Seven she could find.  Agreement and strength poured in – not from the lyrium, but from her Awakened, through her own Song and Taint.

It resisted – it couldn’t resist she and Wonder, not with the Awakened behind her.  Closer.  Tighter.  It was  _ harder  _ than with her own Tainted leavings, but practice – oh, she had practice.   _ Years  _ of practice from the time that had erased itself from her memory.  She dove further, demanded  _ more,  _ and the last lightness of her skin vanished beneath the Taint she called on.

The barrier sealed, shrinking further and  _ further.   _ Alissa’s skin trembled, but she stayed focused so deep in the Fade and corruption the physical almost didn’t exist.  All that did was her Song, the different Song she worked to keep alive in front of her, and the threads of melody she pulled from the Beyond, heightened by the Titan’s Song that still seeped through her veins.

Finally, she stooped to pick up the faceted darkness with a shaking hand.  The faintest hint of red swirled in the center – the hint of red that shouldn’t have been necessary,  _ wasn’t  _ necessary for the Cure…but was a lure for another ragged remnant of a soul. 

“What is that?”

Alissa looked back at the First Warden from her knees, her other hand wrapped tightly around her staff the only reason she hadn’t fallen further.

“A tool.”  Her tart voice managed a steadiness the rest of her didn’t.  A last pulse of strength from her Awakened, and she let go the Song enough for her skin to return to the pale veil that hid the truth of her, even from the Wardens who should know better.   _ How could they?  Even my own Wardens don’t, and they have experience using the Taint, not just surviving it.   _ She stood and glanced at the woman who was being carried away, still weeping – but now it was just blood, not Taint.

“She is Cured.”

The blood mage nodded.  “Cured, but will her mind heal?”

Alissa shrugged.  “I don’t know.”  That wasn’t _her_ problem.

_ Nathaniel.   _ Maybe she should figure it out.  There  _ were  _ Wardens that mattered to her back home.


	9. Memories and the Future

She was about to head below the Deep Roads to go up against a Blighted Magister, High Priest of a theoretically-dead  _ god,  _ and the tiny mage couldn’t keep her mind on her task.  Oh, she would once they teamed up with her Awakened - the small group of Wardens joining her weren’t happy they would be left behind, but the Awakened were  _ hers  _ in a way the First Warden didn’t realize.  Plus, the Wardens here had all Joined on the blood of Andoral.  That was...well a probably bad idea to have too close.  No.  It was better to rely on her Awakened.  Safer.  Plus then she wouldn’t need to talk.

_ You forge your own chains, little pretender… _

Alissa slammed the door shut on that memory.  _  She knew how to cut herself off from her Wardens, she just didn’t have the courage to.  Yet.  They still needed her.  More, she needed them  _ to deal with what the Blight was doing to their land.  If only was an incredibly stupid game for a mage to play, especially a mage whose moods could influence those around her…

But for a moment, she couldn’t resist.

_ ** _

_ ‘You want to do what?’  Sigrun blinked.  ‘Play...pretend?  About things that aren’t even possible?’ _

_ Kieran nodded.  ‘It’s something that was pop...well, not popular, but something a few of the pages and the servants did in Orlais.  I have a book - it’s how to...well, play a story that you write as you go.  Everyone makes up a person, and then you go adventuring together.  It doesn’t have to make sense why you’re all working together, it can be as silly as you want.’ _

_ A whisper in her ear.  ‘Silly as a Qunari following a female mage, Liss?’  She grinned up at Alistair, as little as she wanted to move her ear further from his tickling lips. _

_ Nathaniel flipped through.  ‘What’s an orc?’ _

_ ‘Oh, it’s a...big, greenish person.  They don’t have very high intelligence, but can’t be poisoned.’  Kieran’s eyes crossed.  ‘Kind of a cross between a Hurlock and a Qunari, but green and not Tainted and not dragony.’ _

_ Sigrun, standing, looked over his shoulder.  ‘Sylvans?  But they’re not trees, they’re...tree...spirits?  That can leave their trees?  Who would create a demon that can get free of its host?  Wait; they’re supposed to be GOOD?’  Her eyes narrowed.  ‘They’re also green.  And naked.  Kieran, how old were the other people playing this?’ _

_ The boy flushed.  ‘They’re not...look, see?  They have...moss.’ _

_ Alissa very carefully didn’t look at the quickly reddening Alistair.  ‘There are classes?  So...anyone can be a...a sorcerer?  That’s like a mage, right?’ _

_ ‘Yes.  Or there are gods for different planes of existence.  It’s not REAL, Aunt Liss.’ _

_ Morrigan, standing safely behind her son, quirked her lips at Kieran’s exasperated voice, so like hers.  ‘Let us create these people, then.  Did you say one person needed to be the storyteller?’ _

_ He nodded.  ‘I have before, but...I like playing better.’ _

_ ‘Then play you shall, young man.  I will come up with an adventure for all of you.’ _

_ She had been charmed by the chance to play as one of her Awakened, even if green, and modeled her ‘Sweetheart’ off of her old friends Slash and Grumpy.  Unsurprisingly, Alistair made up a sylvan.  Surprisingly, so did Nathaniel.  After a narrow glance at the men, Sigrun created a pixie cleric named Godstomper, who liked to ride on Sweetheart’s shoulder when she wasn’t flying around.  Kieran went with a wizard who was some kind of cat-human mix and liked fire. _

_ ‘Thus, you chose to rest in the inn, along the edge of an ancient and powerful forest.  There was word of danger, and word of gold.’  Morrigan’s voice dropped naturally into a quiet chant.  Sigrun, you are woken by the presence of others, unfamiliar to your senses - mirror images of each other, with hair like ivy and deep earthen eyes.’  The ‘twins’ Meer and Faun...even Morrigan had to hide a chuckle at that. _

_ ‘Whut?’  Sigrun took on an even more chipper voice, but a hung-over, angry one.  ‘Whut’re all of you around me bed for?  Bunch ‘o creepers!’ _

_ Alissa giggled, then tried to fake a deep, booming voice.  ‘AM your bed, Godthumps.’ _

_ ‘GODSTOMPER!  Oh, me head...get it right!’ _

_ It had been a delightful few hours that ended three bottles of wine for the adults and most of a chocolate cake later. _

_ ‘What’s the funnest thing of playing pretend, Liss?’  Alistair’s whisper ran up the side of her neck as her robe slid from her shoulders. _

_ She giggled again, warm from the wine.  ‘Nathaniel trying for a falsetto.’  He chuckled back.  ‘What’s the...the...normalest part of that game?’ _

_ ‘Normalest?’ _

_ She snorted, luckily remembering to leave the Fade alone.  ‘Half a bottle of wine, and I let you have funnest.’ _

_ His arms picked her up and bounced her in the middle of the bed.  ‘A bunch of random people off to save the world, maybe?’ _

_ ‘That’s normal?’ _

_ He chuckled again, shedding his own clothes and joining her.  ‘Oh, I don’t know.  A mage, a former Templar, an apostate, and a dog walk into a bar…’ _

_ ‘A TAVERN, Alistair.’  It had been a tavern, her first one… _

She shook off the memory.  They were why she was doing this.  No.  Ish.  She was doing it because it already knew she was here, plus it would help the rest of the Order.  She was a Warden, still.  A finger touched the silverite pendant that burned against her skin.  _ She was still a Warden.   _

_ ** _

Was there anywhere free enough of the Taint to risk what needed to be done with the Appraiser?  Alissa doubted it, but needed to come up with  _ something _ .  A new secret to carry with her; it tasted even more bitter than all the secrets she’d kept, but Weisshaupt was free for the moment.  Even   _ she  _ could hardly hear the Appraiser’s Song and she carried his remnant with her, in a ‘gem’ of Taint and still-living blood tucked into a satin-lined pocket of her divided robes.

_ It’s not blood magic.  It was necessary, the only way to free the Order. _

She hadn’t  _ used  _ power of the blood or the poor woman’s suffering, hadn’t even noticed it; she and Wonder had just kept the blood alive, the Song of the Appraiser tied to it.  When she left the other Wardens to keep the path clear, they let her – and thus never knew of her Awakened, not tied to the Old Gods or their servants.

_ More damned secrets. _

The news had spread through the Awakened.  Nathaniel and Alistair met her as soon as she crossed the Hunterhorns.

“Liss!”  Enveloped in his frantically relieved hug, she almost couldn’t breathe.  It didn’t matter as she held him close.  “Thank the Maker, I was so worried.”

Alissa buried her head in his chest, breathing in the familiar scent of sweat, dragon, Taint and  _ Alistair.   _ “I’m stubborn, love.”

The other, quiet voice added to the conversation before it could get too sappy.  “Were you successful?”

Successful.  What was success?  “Yes,” she said finally.  “I…found out what happened to Weisshaupt, and dealt with it.  The South will still be independent if we want to be.”   _ Free…how free were they? _

**_‘AS FREE AS YOU LET YOURSELF BE.’_ **

The words ate into her marrow, appearing wholesale.  She’d thought…she’d hoped…she’d been wrong.  Whatever it was, it  _ wasn’t  _ another of the Seven…or Six, or Five, whatever the number was now.  It wasn’t a Darkspawn, though the Taint answered as well.  Not the Seven, not a spirit...what else was there?  The Stone?  No, as much as she’d been called it, she wasn’t a dwarf.

Her distraction made Alistair push back, holding her shoulders.  “Liss, what did you do?”  He concentrated – Stone, she’d forgotten how good he’d gotten at this, or hadn’t realized.  “Liss!”  He flinched back from her.  “What in Andraste’s name is that?”

_ Stone and sky. _

No lies, and no secrets.  Not from these two, not if she could help it.  “What’s left of a High Priest - one of the Seven,” she admitted.  They both drew back.  “Look, it’s under control!  It was the Appraiser…the High Priest of Andoral.  That’s why the Order started getting so strange…they’d fallen under the sway of an awake Magister. But he’s not now.”

“Under control?  Just like Corypheus?  The Order tried that already, Liss, and look at where that got them!”  She flinched at Alistair’s words.  “Do you want to end up like that?!”

“I won’t!  I’m sure I won’t.  I cut off the Song from…” they weren’t listening.  “Alistair, what else could I do?  Leave him there, awake and tainting the Order?”

_ He called me one of them. _

_ No.  No, I’m not. _

But what was she now?  “It’s…complicated.  I’d like to deal with this, put it somewhere safeish.”

“Safeish, Alissa?  What?  Where?”

“This is all it is.”  She showed them the Barrier-sealed object, just small enough to be comfortable in her hand, red gleaming through the black opalescence.  Where?  Good question.  Then an idea hit.  “Somewhere Wardens aren’t welcome.  Even me.”

Alistair caught on first.  “Liss, my love, this is the most outrageous thing you’ve ever come up with.”

The familiar game made her smile tentatively.  It was.  “Can you think of a better one?”  Now all they had to do was figure out how to get the ‘gem’ holding the Appraiser into Denerim’s Palace.  Maybe the Mad Queen would be good for something, and it couldn’t make  _ her _ worse.

“You’re mad.”

She shook her head.  “No.  But I  _ will  _ see the Order free of the Seven and free of the Calling.  Somehow.”

**_‘FREEDOM…THERE ARE WAYS.’_ **

_ Whatever you are, I’m not going to chain myself to you, either. _

It answered, rising through her awareness.                                                                       

**_‘I WOULD NEVER ASK IT.  YOU WILL SEE.’_ **


End file.
